Shuffling the Cards
by HalcyonFrost
Summary: Tony is no hero so when the same rogue deity that leveled a SHIELD base appears in Stark Tower and offers Tony the Tesseract for a deal, how can he say no? [evil!Tony AU, set during Avengers film, M for copious amounts of swearing and for violence in later chapters]
1. Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

**AN: **This is set during the Avengers, but Tony's not the good hero. Sorry if it seems a little messy; it's a work in progress and there are still several things I don't like about the first chapter that I'll undoubtedly alter later. -_-

Credit where credit's due: Blake and Gaile's Loki/Tony AU vids (Seek You Out: www. youtube watch?v =RZ6c3m6boHc and This Is A Trick: www. youtube watch?v= STHdh-dRdAY) on Youtube are AMAZING. Go watch them. Seriously.

**Update on 8-11-13: **Edited a few tiny phrases to fix timeline issues. Chapter on whole unchanged.

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**Chapter One: Setting the Stage**

Tony Stark had been saying for years that he wasn't "the hero type" and no one doubted it. The problem was that they still expected him to commit heroic acts, and that just didn't sit too well with Tony. Being told what he could and couldn't do never ended well and history was proof of that. "Build the Jericho missile" and he builds the Mark I Iron Man suit. "Stay below the radar" and Tony does the exact opposite. "Read from the cue cards" and he confesses to the room full of press that he's Iron Man. This had been going on all his life and it was silly to think that things would change.

It was no secret that Tony practically ruled the world already. His tech was everywhere, his weapons were everywhere, and once he perfected his arc reactor, then that would be everywhere too. He was pretty much a few steps short of owning it all and simply lacked the formal title. "CEO of Stark Industries" was quite nice, but "Emperor of the Known Universe" was so much better. Tony ran on scotch, sex, and power and his appetites grew constantly. World domination - at least the official admittance of his rule - was the final goal. And if SHIELD didn't keep dumping these consulting gigs on him, he would reach his goal a lot faster.

This gig though... This gig was worth it. Someone stole the Tesseract. _His_ Tesseract, the one Tony was supposed to have. Some god from another age, pulled from another realm, was not allowed to walk in and take his Tesseract, so of course, Tony accepted this case for himself and only for himself. The file was chock full of unnecessary characters that Tony didn't need to know about, the infamous Dr. Banner, the first superhero, SHIELD agents, aforementioned bastard god's brother, all people that Tony had researched before. There wasn't enough about the Tesseract and its captor.

But he could always ask the source.

"I don't remembering ordering any Norwegian delivered." Tony leans back from his screens to face the figure stalking some ten feet away. "Fascinating biography on you, by the way. Love your work, it's got a definite... artistic quality to it." He gestures to the images of Loki taking out the SHIELD base - destroyed by proxy as it was actually the Tesseract's unharnessed energy that turned the underground complex into a crater - and smiles. Frankly, he was surprised SHIELD even passed over all this footage anyway since Tony was a consultant, just a consultant and he wanted nothing more to do with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.

"The images SHIELD has proffered are nothing compared to the real thing, I assure you." Loki says, passing the scepter from one hand to another. Tony keeps a close eye on it and monitors the distance between them; he'd seen the footage, knew that fancy stick could turn even Barton into a personal buttmonkey for the enemy. Intriguing technology, but Tony had a feeling the cons outweighed the pros on that thing if the psychopathic look Loki's face was anything to go on.

On the surveillance, Loki's eyes looked sunken and his body unruly, but the man before him was anything but uncoordinated now after a few days' rest. A god in no small meaning of the word. Taller than Tony, he paced with unearthly fluidity and presented as a creature of extreme opposites. Loki moved like both predator and prey, ready to both pounce to kill and dive to dodge. Leather and armor, flowing coat tails and stiff metal chest pieces fit to a strong form of lean muscle, soft features on a face of sharp cheekbones with a piercing gaze from unusually bright eyes. He put together a striking picture in person.

"I'm sure grainy images and secondhand talk from a biased brother is a sad bit of not a whole helluva lot for a god that's a few thousand years old." Hell, that kind of info wouldn't do Tony justice. Lucky him, he got to meet the real Loki. "Why" was still the big question on his mind, but it could wait.

Loki's lips split into a wide grin and he opens the distance between them a little more, eleven feet, fourteen, twenty feet away in slow, evenly paced and deliberate steps. "You would know, wouldn't you, Stark? Barton has given quite the tale of the great man of iron. Privatizing world peace, taking things into your own armored hands, successfully reaping vengeance on your betrayers... You've quite the legacy yourself."

Tony crosses his arms and tilts his head to one side. Flattery was great, but Loki wasn't the flattering type. "Skip to the point. Are you here to mind tap me or not, Loki?"

The god's eyes fall to his scepter for a moment before returning to Tony and shaking his head. "No, I'm not here for that. Your worth is far greater when you're in your right mind. I come bearing a proposition, Mr. Stark."

Proposition? One where he would have to trust a homicidal god, no doubt. Not a good option, but Tony could always listen while waiting for backup. He taps out a short code across his keyboard - putting JARVIS on alert to respond with one word if need be - before turning back to Loki and reclining into a relaxed position in his chair again "Commence," he waves one hand in a vague gesture and then tucks both hands behind his head, "you have my undivided and temporary attention."

Loki moves forwards again to glance at the screens, seemingly entertained with the chaos he sees. "You know the Tesseract is in my possession."

"Yeah. Jumped ahead in the line, there were those of us waiting for it, you know."

Gaze fixed on Tony, emerald orbs were alight with pleasure. "I am aware. What if I told you I was willing to give you the Tesseract?"

Tony raises one eyebrow in disbelief. "You want to _give_ it to me? And what's that going to cost?" Sure, Tony had insane amounts of money, but what would a god want with cash and bank accounts?

"Cost? Absolutely nothing. I require...assistance in a matter that I am unable to conduct alone." He waited to make sure Tony didn't have any other commentary before continuing. "I have an army at my command called the Chitauri. Vile parasites that care only for destruction and pain." The words are hissed. "They tasked me to retrieve the Tesseract from earth for them and in exchange, they would lend me their army to rule this planet." Sighing, Loki shakes his head and his eyes travel over the various video feeds playing across the screens. "I care not for ruling though. Mutinous factions and disloyal denizens are not in my interests. What I do want is the end of the Chitauri."

"The aliens that are offering to help you rule the world, you want them dead?" Tony stands with a sigh and leaves Loki to look over all the top secret images that were supposed to be for Tony's eyes only. He goes to his bar, pulls out a decanter of alcohol, and starts pouring himself a drink. "Alright, let's say I want the Tesseract and I agree to help you in exchange for everybody's favorite pocket-sized Allspark." He speaks heavily with emphatic hand movements to accent his words and draw attention. "What am I supposed to 'assist' you with?"

"SHIELD and the Chitauri, of course."

Even Tony in all his power and self-inflated ego has to laugh at that. He was supposed to fight SHIELD _and _an alien army capable of overtaking earth? And with what resources? His own suits and a cut off god? A few brain-washed goons? "Um, no. I'm not suicidal enough to take on a government organization and an occupying force from another world at the same time. I'm amazing, but I'm not that amazing."

"All you have to do, Mr. Stark, is play a part." Loki says assuringly. "I want the Chitauri erased, you want the Tesseract, and SHIELD wants your consultations. The Chitauri will come, there is no stopping this. If I do not secure the Tesseract for them and open the portal between worlds, they will find another way and destroy everything on their path without mercy. If we open the portal and destroy their mothership, then their armies will be crippled indefinitely."

"And you want them dead so much because?"

There is a suspicious pause and Loki's mouth is set in a hard line, but Tony doesn't avert his gaze. "I fell from the Bifrost and came upon their world months ago. _Months. _I declined their offer profusely at first, but the Chitauri -" he pauses, eyes glazing over for a moment, "the Chitauri persisted until I complied. I want to return the great _favors_ they impressed upon me."

Loki's eyes are hard and Tony doesn't have to ask what happened; he knows that look well. He saw it in the mirror after Afghanistan. For a moment, he wondered why the hell Loki confessed to his motives, but of course, Barton is under Loki's control and therefore, all the knowledge of SHIELD is at the god's disposal. By telling Tony of Loki's treatment at the hands of the Chitauri, whether it was the truth or not, it accessed a weak spot in Tony's defenses. Tony was well aware of this weakness, but he couldn't prevent the way he automatically reacted to the similarities. Tony wanted revenge on the Ten Rings and he got it; Loki wanted revenge on the Chitauri and he was seeking Tony's help to achieve that.

"If you are not willing, then speak up so that I may stop wasting my breath." Loki says in a biting tone, backing up towards the door to threaten his departure despite not actually needing a door to leave.

"_Au contraire_," Tony bows and pulls a smile. "Sounds like a fun plan you've got going on there. I want in."

The god straightens and steps back to Tony with a smile. "Then we have much to discuss."

Tony gestures to the screens and walks over carrying two tumblers of vodka, offering one to Loki. "Well, then, down to business." Loki glances at the glass as if taking it would leave him vulnerable. "Go on, it's not poisoned and I don't bite. Not unless you ask." Tony winks and Loki scoffs but doesn't berate the choice of words. Interesting.

Turning their attentions back to business, he focuses. It really is just a business deal. The god is attractive as all get out, but Tony has Pepper. Sort of. "SHIELD is going to search for the Tesseract, if they haven't started already. Dr. Banner there," Tony nods towards the far left where video shows Hulk smashing, "well, not how he looks there, but the man inside the monster, that pretty face," to the still of a brunette juxtaposed to the video, "is the leading brain on gamma radiation. The Tesseract emits gamma rays, so it's no mystery why SHIELD put Banner in the files they sent me. They'll find a way to forcibly convince him out into the open and searching for our toy like a good little lab rat in no time. A city or somewhere heavily populated with a din of tech waves and fields will help hide the Tesseract, but you'll have to work fast because even hiding it somewhere like Stark Tower, it'll take a couple days to pin point the signature here, but they will find it. That much is inevitable."

Taking a small sip of his drink, he walks a little further and stops in front of the set in the middle. "Steve Rogers, Captain America, the good little soldier lost in time. Hydra was working with the Tesseract in World War Two when Cap was his new and improved self fresh out of the lab; disappeared for a while before they fished him out the ice recently. Another connection to the Tesseract, so no surprises there either. I heard he packs a punch though, so better beware of that.

"You know that L'oreal jock," Tony bypasses the images of Thor and the fall of the Destroyer as Loki casts each of them an intense glare, "so we'll skip him and go for the good little SHIELD agents at the end." No videos provided for them, but Tony figured if Barton was involved, so would Agent Romanov. Widow wasn't the only one good at reading people. "Natasha's tough, but human as far as I can tell. She'll take it personally about mind-raping her boyfriend though. Good actress, she'll probably try to pull a mind trick on you."

He pivots back to Loki and takes another sip of vodka before Tony props his hips against the table edge. "So that's my part of show and tell, now it's your turn. What do you want from me that you can't get from a turned SHIELD agent?"

"A secret ally," Loki says, moving to stand in front of Tony. "I need an ally inside SHIELD. Obviously Barton will not be suitable and anyone else that I enthrall with this," he indicates his scepter, "is immediately recognizable. This means that I must have a willing accomplice that can work within close quarters of SHIELD and not be suspect. My options are slim. Barton told me of your... tenuous alliance with them and I had hoped you'd be willing to help me."

"SHIELD didn't invite me on their little excursion. I'm just a consultant."

Loki smiles. "From what I've gleaned, invitations will not stop you from insinuating yourself." He tilts the glass to his lips and drinks half of the liquid without so much as a cringe at the alcohol's strength.

Tony pauses to give a few moments of consideration, already formulating ideas on how he could get onto a SHIELD helicarrier he wasn't even supposed to know about. He glances back to the flashing surveillance of heroes, monsters, and gods, all flies on a web, but what was at the center? "They've given me a lot here, but it's purposefully overkill, deliberately so much information that I can't see what they're hiding. There's something else with the Tesseract, not just some war for energy and power."

"Yes, there is." Loki agrees, following Tony's line of sight. "It would be much easier to discover their secrets from inside the cage, don't you think?"

A small laugh breaks from Tony, but it sounds like nothing more than a nasal exhalation. "Well, today must be your lucky day, Loks. You've just got yourself an iron-clad ally." Putting his drink down, he holds his hand out to Loki and the god hesitates for a moment before mirroring the movements, setting his glass by Tony's and shaking the offered hand. Tony's hand tightens slightly and the edge of his lips turn sharper. "When this is done, I want my Tesseract, no funny business. I help you, you hold up your side of the bargain. My Tesseract to do with what I want, no questions, no strings. Agreed?"

Loki's eyes harden, but he nods and returns the pressure of the grip. "My word is gold, Mr. Stark. The Chitauri ship destroyed, the portal closed, and after the suspicions have passed, no longer than a few of your Midgardian weeks, I will give you the true Tesseract and it will be yours. I expect you to play your part as well; SHIELD cannot know of your connection to me."

Compared to this deal with Loki, Tony's relationship with SHIELD was downright trustworthy. He was making promises with the God of Lies and even with all the crazy shit Tony had done before, this was a bad idea. But now it was done and the only way he was getting out of it was if Loki was dead.

"And I want to see the Tesseract."

They released each other simultaneously, though Loki moved away with a sneer and when he spoke, his voice was irritated. "It's safe."

"I want to make sure you have it."

"I am a god, Mr. Stark. I wouldn't advise you to question me." Loki hisses, but Tony remains calm and collected, the usual shit-eating grin on his face.

"You might be a god, but I'm the one you came to for help. Deny it all you want, but carrying around your magic staff there isn't helping with your compensation issues."

"I could slay you where you stand." The god threatens, clutching the handle of a scepter that Tony now noticed was glowing a little more than before.

"And then where would you get your ally? You need me and if you want to actually get my help, you'll show me the Tesseract."

Loki fell silent, casting a stare deadlier than any glare Natasha, Fury, and his Ten Rings captors combined could muster. Still, Tony stared back in the face of death. Better to die young than grow old and crippled, right?

"I... accept your offer." The words were venomous and Tony was honestly a bit surprised his threat worked. Stark: 1, homicidal Norse god: 0. Fucking succeed for Tony.

"Good. When can you show me?"

Then Loki grinned and Tony wasn't so sure it was fitting in their current situation. "I think now. You've taken control over enough of these proceedings, Mr. Stark. It's my turn."

Before Tony could argue or question anything, Loki closed the distance in one measured pace and took ahold of Tony's arm. The last thing Tony saw was everything splintering apart and his vision blurring to nothing.


	2. Chapter 2: Promises

**AN: **Welcome chapter two! Sorry for the wait, but I had a couple other stories to finish on AO3 (*cough*porn*cough* first and I take forever on first drafts sometimes. I am not a fast poster. Dx

_**Chapter Summary:** Tony gets a peek at his next toy and Loki makes another few deals._

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**Chapter Two: Promises**

Tony felt lied to.

Moving through space was supposed to be this wonderful thing, surroundings bursting into pure light and beauty as though one had been transported into the Aurora Borealis herself. It was supposed to be the single most spectacular sight a human being would ever witness and Tony was going to be one of a very few that would see it. The Bifrost was a rainbow bridge, he thought. The thing was that he was not travelling the Rainbow Bridge.

Instead of beauty and light and happy places filled with unicorns and fairies, all Tony got was darkness consuming everything right before his eyes. All matter fractured into formless nothingness, consumed in thick smoke that choked out every sense of touch, sight, smell, hearing, everything. His body no longer felt like a weight because he didn't even feel like he _had_ a body anymore. If he had closed his eyes and shut it all out, maybe, just maybe this would have been different, but no, Tony wanted to see. Now he swore he was never going open his eyes for such a thing again. Magic was not fun.

"Stark!"

Tony jolts upright and realizes he'd somehow ended up slumped on the ground against a brick wall. They're in a dark tunnel that extends and curves around to unknown and unseen depths in both directions with voices coming from his left, but Tony can't see them yet. It looks like an abandoned subway tunnel, far below ground, and definitely old enough that there's a substantial amount of rock and probably lead to block scanning equipment. Barton is working diligently for his new boss, it seems.

When he looks up, Loki is standing over him with a look of disdain and disappointment."You lost consciousness." Loki says and Tony grimaces. "I forgot to caution you: viewing the path can be overwhelming to less-experienced travelers " The slight turn of lips says that Loki hadn't forgotten though; the bastard did it on purpose.

Tony forces himself to standing without help and pulls himself up to his full height, which was, unfortunately, still several inches shorter than the god. "Tesseract. Show me."

"Of course. Follow me, Mr. Stark."

He leads the way around the corner to a mess of machines and boxes lining a path to a central room. Wires hung along metal posts protruding from aged concrete columns, nameless workers and scientists twiddling away at things in glass boxes. One well lit area separated off with a plastic strip door at the end catches Tony's eye as the focal point of this whole operation and sure enough, he spots the familiar blue cube suspended in a machine inside. Selvig - the scientist connected with the Tesseract project - was working on a device similar to the one that housed the Tesseract at the now destroyed base, but it looked like this time was going better for him.

A less wanted familiarity in the form of Agent Clint Barton was spotted and Tony stops dead in his tracks before backing up out of immediate view. Mind controlled, yes, but did he want to risk it? Loki continues on ahead without Tony, exchanging words with the enthusiastic Selvig, followed by the stoic Clint as well. From afar, Loki looks equal parts harried and frustrated, gaze settling on nothing in particular as he looks over the dusty concrete at his feet, hands restlessly twitching at his sides. Clint speaks and Loki looks up, mouth splitting into a wide grin. They talk for a few more seconds, their words unintelligible from the range Tony is keeping as he tries not to garner the attention of the SHIELD agent, but his efforts are futile.

"Mr. Stark," Loki calls and Clint's gaze darts to Tony in faint surprise. The shock is less that Tony is there and more that he's not there under the same methods that Clint himself is. Having those eyes trained on him isn't the most comfortable feeling, but Tony walks forward anyway. Caught now, might as well play the cards he's dealt.

"Like the new look, Hawk, mind slave suits you." Tony glances between the agent and the god, but Clint keeps his expression neutral except for a slight narrowing of the eyes and Loki completely ignores the comment.

"Tonight in Stuttgart, I must catch the eye of a certain German scientist. SHIELD will intercept, no doubt. If Iron Man happened to join, I might just find myself at odds enough to surrender." He casts a meaningful look that Tony didn't need to question.

"You want to get caught." Tony says, not asks.

"Very astute, Stark, though I'd advise you conserve your scarce remaining intelligence for when I have need of it."

Tony was hardly offended; anyone expecting kind words from the god of lies was in for disappointment. "Ouch, words hurt, babe."

"Knives more so. Would you like to test this or will you keep your tongue to yourself?" Loki bites back and Tony grins, making a zipper motion across his lips. Not that he would actually stay quiet for long, of course. "Yes, I plan to be captured. All a part of my game. I need you to be my unspoken ally to make sure things run smoothly. You should have an opportunity to board SHIELD's craft as well."

"And distract the good doctor from finding the Tesseract too soon." Tony adds, already breaking his vow of silence. "Where are you taking it for the portal?"

"That decision has already been made. I will let you know before the time comes." The words are suspiciously short and Tony has a feeling there is something hiding behind them, but he's not going to be able to get it out of Loki if the god doesn't want to give it up. "Your only job is to make certain that the Tesseract is not found preemptively and you are to prevent its discovery by _any means necessary_, Stark."

"You want wet work shit, ask your bird. Banner's monster is indestructible. He may look shy, but human face or not, he's still got the Hulk underneath. I don't exactly want to pit myself in a crushable suit against Bruce fucking Banner. He squishes me like a banana and I'll be dead as soon as that metal bends inward."

"Then find another way to distract the beast. Anger him and run, leave him to destroy the craft, I care not for details as long as you _succeed_. If he finds the Tesseract, neither one of us will be able to make our uses of it." The god rounds to Clint again. "Agent Barton, make your necessary preparations and try not to kill Mr. Stark before his usefulness has run dry. I believe that might be the most difficult task of all."

Loki stalks away after one more disdainful glance at Tony and Tony turns to get a glimpse of the Tesseract. Safe and sound and ready to turn into a portal to Hell. He already feels like it's his baby. The things he can do with that shiny box in his possession are even better than an unruly alien army, and just thinking of the possibilities sends a shiver down his spine.

Refocusing, he looks to Clint with a grin and a renewed vigor for playing a game with a god. "Having fun with your new boss?"

"I'm following orders." Clint says flatly.

"You do realize he has you under a spell, right?"

"Yes." The archer picks up his quiver of arrows, slipping one arm through the strap and pulling the loop over his head before adjusting it to tighten it securely across his chest. "Everything is clear cut this way. Black, white, and swathed in red when I'm done."

"Sounds colorful." Tony didn't have a whole lot of knowledge about Clint's personality, but he had been one of Fury's trusted, so he should be more loyal to SHIELD. Then again, he "shot" both Fury and the assistant director, Hill and neither one of them ended up with more than a few minor scratches. Maybe there is more loyalty hidden in his subconscious than he realizes. For the most part though, under Loki's thrall, Clint is just a guiltless soldier that does what his master orders him to do. The idea was attractive until Tony realized that Loki could easily do the same thing to Tony and that just isn't a fun thought. Maybe he should play a little nicer. Or not. Probably not.

"Well, nice little chat we've had here, Hawk. And uh, best of luck surviving this guy's employ." Giving him a pat on the shoulder, he turns to leave Clint to whatever "preparations" he has to make for Stuttgart. Tony has a strong feeling that failure wasn't tolerated under Loki's control.

Tony takes the liberty of walking around by himself to observe everything the underground set up has to offer. Anyone else might call it a mess, but Tony's well-trained eyes know better than to write off disorganization as lower value. This place is a treasure trove if one knew what they were looking at. Government level tech, super secrets, the type of engineering that would make appearances in Tony's wet dreams. His mouth nearly waters just looking around here at all the pretty things he would kill to get his hands on. The glares and warding glances he was getting from the people working on said mechanical beauties has Tony keeping a slight distance though; best not to get into trouble here when he doesn't have any armor.

More than half the people working here are normal, meaning that didn't have the telltale eerie eye glow that Selvig and Clint have. Meaning they are working with Loki willingly. Humans working with a god that shows up from outer space and levels a SHIELD base. That was... suspicious to say the least. What had Loki promised them? The downfall of SHIELD maybe? SHIELD had plenty of enemies to choose from. Or did he promise that they would get a piece of land when he ruled the world? Did he promise them the Tesseract too? Everyone here is expendable and a means to an end for Loki; that, Tony has no doubt of and no issue with. So which promises are the ones Loki intends to honor? Did he intend to honor any at all or did he just tailor a different lie to every person in order to get what he wanted? With the Tesseract in his own possession and out of the Chitauri's control, Loki could travel to any realm he wanted and create or destroy worlds with the power of a glowing cube. Why would he give up that ability?

This leads to the conclusion that, in Loki's plan, Tony is expendable as well and that just doesn't sit well with the inventor. Since he does want the Tesseract, he still has to stick around on the chance that Loki does intend to hand off the artifact to Tony. If he doesn't intend to honor the deal, then Tony can always look out for the chance to steal it in the aftermath. Finders-keepers type deal and if Loki wants it back, he can fight the veritable army of suits that Tony is planning to make to protect it. To get that far, Tony has to make himself... less expendable. He had plenty to offer that no one else could. If he could get Loki to even hesitate in killing him, that would be enough. Hesitation could be all he needs.

Minor problem: there's little time to accomplish that and Tony isn't going to bend over backwards for approval. He just has to find something he already has that Loki will find useful in a longer term view.

Tony finds Loki alone a short ways down another disused tunnel to the side. His back is to Tony and the god is rolling his shoulders tiredly, the staff magicked away to only he knew where. Tony approaches him from behind with caution and exhales aloud."Prongs, you're tense." He slides his fingers over Loki's shoulders and squeezes hard enough to feel even through the leather coat, wringing a deep groan from the god. Hands so adept at machinery dig into the taut muscles and ruthlessly massage away the aches with a grip that has Loki visibly unwinding by the second.

"And what would you know of tension, Stark?" Loki replies far too cuttingly and Tony increases the pressure until Loki inhales sharply.

"Plenty. My muscles firm up just looking at you, babe."

Tony smirks as Loki pivots just enough to rake his eyes over the mortal behind him. Green pins brown when their eyes meet and Loki somehow manages a withering look. "So I see. Tempting as your, ah, offer is," Loki's eyes shudder closed as Tony hits a tough knot and works through it with near brutal pressure that Loki isn't seeming to mind at all, "I have more need of focus right now than your distractions."

"Should I stop this then?" Tony is still grinning as he moves his hands down the god's spine.

"Stop and I will enslave your mind for the sole reason of finishing this." Loki snaps and Tony chuckles, still massaging the tension away.

"Demanding, geez. My hands are distracting you though."

There is a slight pause before Loki speaks again. "They are serving as motivation now." His words are even, planned and intentional down to the very intonation.

"Hm?"

Loki sighs and flexes against the hands along his spine as a bundle of nerves come into range of the attentions. "When we win, Stark, after defeating the Chitauri and after I return with the Tesseract, perhaps I will be in need of another way to relieve my tension." He twists his head to look back at Tony again. "By then, a massage will be far too weak to soothe my frustrations. If you surpass expectations," he purrs and that's a sound that can make Tony tense up in all kinds of ways, "I'm positive there will be many instances after. Now it is your motivation."

"That an offer to sleep over at my place? And by 'sleep', I mean no actual sleeping will be happening until well into the next day."

"We'll see after the battle, Stark, not before."

Maybe the God of Lies was getting rusty or maybe Tony just knew a conquest when he saw one, but there was a look on Loki's face that had him doubting the tentative proposition that was filled with a lot of implied "if I so feel like it but probably not". Still, Tony had seduced harder targets before. If the idea was even in Loki's mind, Tony could work with that.

"So about Agent Barton-"

"He won't betray your identity," Loki assures before Tony even asks the question. "He cannot break my spell. I will do that myself when the time is right. However, he won't live long enough to tell SHIELD of his exploits. Your secret is safe, Stark."

Well, that sounded ominous but fine. As long as Tony wasn't having to worry about SHIELD beating down his door. Shame about Barton getting a knife to the back though. Still, Tony held his own life in higher regard. "I have a first name too, you know."

"I am aware. Calling you so informally would denote familiarity though and I hardly even like you."

Tony digs his thumbs into the muscles on either side of the god's cervical vertebrae and Loki hisses slightly, glaring back at Tony. "Remember you called me for your undercover agent position, Loks."

"Deduce the obvious that you were my _only_ option, Stark. How many others can infiltrate SHIELD as deeply? Even more, how many of those are willing to play double agent? You were the only one capable of such feats. Had I any other choice, we would not be here now."

"If there had been anyone else, I'd still be the best choice. I am that good." Tony boasts easily. "I'll be even better when you give me my Tesseract after this."

"You'll get your treasure." Loki's glare is turning cold, but Tony is still addressing him calmly with hands pressed into the taller male's back. "And it would not be in your best interests to question my word."

"Just reminding, babe. Because if I don't get it, you can bet I'll be at the front of the team tracking you down across every realm. Wonder if I can get your brother to come down."

Loki rips himself from Tony's grip only to spin around and grab Tony by the throat, clutching threateningly without cutting off his air supply yet. "_You'd do well to never mention him again_." For a moment, Tony takes him very seriously too. This is a god he's playing games with. "If I must carry out my plan after disposing of your body, I will."

Tony smiles with a soft breath of a laugh and touches the hand at his throat. "Easy there. No one's calling Wonderboy down. I wouldn't even if I could. Always preferred a brunette to a blond."

Loki doesn't let go or make any movement to release Tony for several agonizingly long seconds. When he finally does, the glare still hasn't gone, but there is a new look in his eyes. Tony likes to think it's respect, but that might have been asking for a bit much. "Good boy." Tony pats the hand that is slowly lowering back to Loki's side. "Shame you aren't looking for a spot as earth ruler. You'd be a handy ally if you weren't such an evil fucker."

"I was a king. See where my attempts at ruling have led me?" He sounds bitter. "_They_ must believe my intention is to rule." Loki glances past the inventor towards the room housing the Tesseract. "They are more likely to follow if they think they can attach themselves like parasites for a fast ride to the top of the world. It is a far easier tale to sell than revenge."

"But revenge was easy to sell to me."

Loki's eyes dart back to Tony without blinking. "Yes." He says.

"And everyone gets to guess who got the truth from the god of lies."

"You could ask, Mr. Stark."

"And I might just get another lie. I'll pass, thanks." Tony shrugs lightly. "It's not like I'm not using you for my own means anyway."

A smirk found its way to his mouth and Loki nodded. "I'm glad we have a mutual understanding then."

"We do make a good team, Loks. Chronic liars make such great partners." Loki scoffs at the sarcasm and Tony grins. "Not to cut our heart-to-heart short here, but since you probably don't want me walking out of your secret base here, mind zapping me back home? I've got trip to Germany scheduled and I need to pack my special suit."

Loki nods again. "Tomorrow then, Stark. Don't be late or SHIELD finding out your involvement will be the least of your worries."

Tony takes Loki's hand and kisses the back of it before Loki jerks it away with an expression of annoyance. "It's a date, sunshine. I'll be there."

Loki doesn't return the smile and wordlessly touches Tony's arm, sending the mortal into another reeling adventure through a cosmic path of upheaved stomachs and blurring vision. When he opens his eyes to see his own tower again, his head is aching a lot more than last time, but he gets the feeling that that's probably not from the journey. Note to his future self: no pissing off sorcerers.

Standing from the spread eagle position across the floor that he'd found himself in, he groans as the world spins in a lasting bout of vertigo before he forces himself to stand. He stumbles a bit but doesn't let it control him as he makes a mental list of the toys he's packing for a SHIELD ship.

Suit, check. He'd have to find a way to get his own lab equipment on board SHIELD's ship though. Their standards for scientific equipment were severely sub par in comparison to Tony's gadgets. "J, how much firepower to pretend to take down a god?"

_"Were this an actual attempt, I'd suggest to pack all of it, sir."_

Tony smiles wide and laughs. "JARVIS, baby, what would I do without you?"

_"By my calculations, you would still be constructing the Mark I if you didn't have my help. I dare say that my rendering is significantly more attractive than what you would have concocted._"

"I believe that, actually. But don't get too cocky, I'll stick you in a body and make you my house slave."

_"That would be a demotion from my current job, sir, as I currently run the entire house at once."_

"Then I'll give you a Scottish accent. Don't tempt me 'cause I'll do it." He threatens badly and Tony can hear the amusement in the AI's voice.

_"Very well, sir, I'll never misbehave again."_

"Good. Let's suit up and plan for Stuttgart then. Is Germany nice this time of year?" Or would it really matter? He was going to be in a climate controlled suit of armor for the whole ten minutes that he might be on the ground to pick up Loki. After that would be the SHIELD carrier. "Never mind, won't matter. JARVIS, set up a business trip to Germany for later."

He looks over his equipment for a moment. "Jarv, where'd that hacking chip go?" Tony starts rooting through the drawers in search of the coin-shaped device. "I need it. SHIELD's systems aren't going to crack themselves." Being on a SHIELD ship was just too good an opportunity to pass up. "Why the hell did I make it so damn small? Fucking discretion. This is why I hate having to go under radar. Makes for so much- ah!"

Pulling out the tiny chip, he gives a kiss before sticking it in his pocket. "Alright, show time, babies. Let's show SHIELD the right way to catch a god."


	3. Chapter 3: Behind Enemy Lines

**AN: **So, an obscene amount of Daft Punk and re-watching the same twenty-five minute span of Avengers later, THERE APPEARS A WILD CHAPTER OF SURPRISING LENGTH. Fight scenes pain me. If this scene seems to skip a bit, it's because I prefer to glaze over and instead write between what we already know from the screen, altering reactions to the parts we have memorized. The next chapter or two might be like that until I pass the point of what we're shown in the movie.

Never-ending thanks to Green Loki for being my motivational cheerleader and not telling me to shut up with all my chatter of fangirling over science bros and Loki.

_**Chapter Summary:**__ A glance over Stuttgart, way less Loki than I like, and some science bro talk because Tony's a bit of a Banner fanboy. _

* * *

**Chapter Three: Behind Enemy Lines**

Humility and Tony just didn't go together and neither did Tony and stealth. He raged at the opposite end of the spectrum, but no one could ever accuse him of not being able to pull off extravagance like nobody's business. Blowing into Stuttgart in a blur of shiny red titanium alloy to knock a god on his ass by way of a double repulsor blast was fun, but overriding the quinjet's PA system to blare appropriate tunes and pulling out a dizzying array of munitions aimed at said downed god was the Tony Stark flair that was required of all his exploits. Having Loki surrender to him like that just put the icing of the cake of feeling like a big damn hero.

Steve is panting, looking far too grateful for the fight to be interrupted while Loki barely even looks ruffled in the slightest. Lucky Steve. It just wasn't his day to die, apparently. Then again, Steve survived the brawl only because Loki wasn't trying to kill him.

On the quinjet, Loki is strapped in, everything is good and fine, plans are going smoothly. Then Steve starts to question and Tony cringes inwardly. Good little soldier, stop asking questions. It'll get him in trouble. If Steve got in the way, there wouldn't be any holding back. Be a shame to see the great American icon get iced by a Norse god. Great hero that Tony was, he didn't know which side he would be rooting for.

It's with the ease that Tony has perfected over years of avoiding government suspicion that he smoothly changes the subject. Pilates. Wonder if Cap does Pilates to keep in shape. Surely exploding punching bags isn't his whole workout routine. Ever suspicious Steve doesn't answer the question though and has the gall to turn a dubious eye to Tony. Good eye, but Tony is more careful than that. Avert conversation to Fury bashing and hope that something comes up.

Well then. Look at that luck.

Gratitude for the distraction aside, a _lightning storm_? Wasn't that-

"What's the matter? You scared of a little lightning?" Steve draws attention back to Loki and Tony hasn't seen Loki look that scared yet.

Their eyes meet and Loki's expression speaks for itself. A mixture of _"this was not supposed to happen" _and _"get your shit together fast",_ which, coming from Loki, meant- Oh, crap. He-Man wasn't supposed to show up.

"I'm not overly fond of what follows." Loki says and looks back to the roof.

Something lands on the outside with no manner of a light hit and the quinjet takes a lurch. Okay, _no. _Thor was not showing up here and now. If he wanted Loki, he was going to have to get through Tony.

He opens the door and there appears a god in all his beach blond glory. Before Tony can so much as finish charging his repulsors, there's a hammer in his chest and he's flying against his will in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go. When he looks up, Loki is out his seat by way of Thor's hand on his throat and off the back of the quinjet.

_Shit._

"Stark, we need a plan of attack!" Steve tries to stop him, but Tony barely graces him with an answer.

"I have a plan: attack." If one more god pops in and steals his stuff... No. Focus, Tony. Find them now, fuck them up later. Especially Thor. First opportunity Tony gets, Thor is getting pummeled.

"JARVIS, I need those scans. Find me Loki."

_"Already started, sir." _A good half a minute passes of Tony's anger rising the entire time before JARVIS pipes up with good news. _"There are two energy signatures ahead, bearing fourteen degrees to your right. Calculating GPS coordinates now."_

"Thank you, Jarv. I really would be literally lost without you."

_"I emphatically agree, sir. Be careful."_

"You know me!"

_"As I said..."_

Tony snickers and follows the path on his HUD. He can just barely make out the darkened shapes moving on the rock, but he doesn't need to see them clearly. JARVIS calculates his direction precisely and instead of landing and talking things out between the two brothers, Tony goes for the approach he prefers: stay in flight and knock that bastard to the ground below. Thor lands after a beautiful skid face first across the forest floor while Tony stays perfectly upright, maintaining his height.

The god stumbles to stand and Tony takes no small amount of pleasure in the sight as he opens his visor to get a better look. Throwing down two gods in one night, that's gotta be a record. Thor threatens; Tony is unfazed. Thor tried to take his Loki and, by extension, his Tesseract, so there is no forgiveness here. The god tries posturing further and naturally, Tony takes the opportunity to insult those wafting curtains hanging from Thor's back. Miss O'Hara over there had far too big an ego to compete against Tony.

"Tourist..." Tony turns to walk away and retrieve the trickster that's making himself at home as a spectator on high. There's a growl behind Tony and when he looks back, for the second time that night, a ridiculously over-sized hammer knocks him flat on his back. _Thanks for the help, Reindeer Games. _What was this, a test to prove himself now? No more Norse gods for Tony. Fucking useless except when trying to kill him.

Unfortunately for darling Thor, Tony wasn't a weakling that went down for the count in one hit. Tony does find out, however, that Thor looks much better with a face full of Tony's repulsor. He also learns a little too late that the hammer can be summoned. "God of Thunder" rings in Tony's ears and blinds his vision seconds before the bolt hits him. Electricity arcs off of the suit, the ground, wraps around him, scatters the sensors, and Tony really doesn't want to know how much damage that just did.

_"Power cells at 400% capacity."_

He pauses just to double check the readings on the HUD. "How about that?" If there ever was a more perfect time for a cliche evil villain laugh, now would be it. This was going to be_ beautiful._

And boy, can Thor fly.

He doesn't stay down though and Tony decides that it's time to fix that. It's a lot harder to carry someone when they're trying to push you off, but Tony tries nonetheless. Every tree in their path gets Thor's face in it and that felt beyond good to Tony. The trees were nothing compared to the rock face, but these damn Asgardians were tough as hell and Thor still managed to get the leverage to push away and send them both spiraling to the ground again, knocking the hammer from Thor's hand. They land with a cloud of dust and both struggle to their feet for a moment before Thor connects a left hook hard enough to twist Tony's head. Tony's payback punch is caught as is his left-handed attempt at the same and when Tony fights to make progress, the sensors start bleating in panic as his right gauntlet is being crushed under the pressure of Thor's fist. Oh, hell no, this is what he wanted to avoid with Hulk.

It's not an original move, but another repulsor beam distracts Thor enough for Tony to give an all too civilized headbutt in another attempt to put the distance between them. That only succeeds when Thor returns the hit with twice the force and Tony has to use his flight stabilizers to stay upright. On second thought: distance = ability to summon the hammer. Hammer = very, very bad and not something Tony wants to deal with again, so he gets in close again and aims to keep Thor too busy to call his favorite weapon.

New note to self: close quarters with the God of Thunder raises risk of a near pile drive into to the dirt. His disorientation allows just enough time for Thor to call Mjolnir, not enough time for Thor to hit before Tony literally knocks the legs out from under him. At least Tony's next punch connects, but a tri-colored shield knocks both of their attentions away.

"That's enough!"

Tony isn't sure whether he's grateful for this or not. Thor isn't standing down yet; he's just standing still. Naive Rogers goes for stern negotiation and fails, Tony gets the third painful blow to the chest, and thank God Vibranium is tough as shit metal that manages to reflect the hammer's blow. Destroys an impressive range of forest in the process too, but it gets Thor to settle the hell down and they - Steve and Tony in a joint effort - manage to talk Thor into letting them take Loki into custody in exchange for bringing Thor in to supervise his brother.

Loki looks pleased when the three get up to the rock, having found himself a comfortable seat to watch their brawl. "Enjoy the show?" Tony says and the grin that greets them is the most genuine that Tony has seen on the trickster's face yet.

"Immensely." Loki says. At least this was one thing Tony could trust as truth. Loki got to watch his big brother get beaten up and surrender to a pair of humans. If that wasn't grounds for fits of laughter and a set of memories to cherish for life, then nothing was worthy.

"Alright, sunshine, up and at 'em or I'll have to frisk you."

Loki raises an eyebrow at the comment, but stands regardless and allows himself to be led to the landing quintet a short distance away. "Perhaps later, fair Stark." He adds under his breath when Tony brushes past his shoulder on the way onto the plane.

It's a tense flight of few words and a lot of staring at Tony, making everyone very glad to leave as soon as they get to the helicarrier. Loki is led away, Tony goes to change suits, and everyone else meets at the conference table on the bridge while Fury vainly attempts to intimidate a god. He is unsuccessful at the task and the tables are reversed instead, Loki making more threats and intimidation than the great director of SHIELD. Tony finds it all hilarious.

Phil fetches Tony and therefore has to endure a whole long-winded, entirely selfless offer of flying Phil to Portland for a cellist so that by the time Tony gets to the bridge, the discussion of Loki has already started. Iridium: stabilizing agent. Was Tony the only one that took notes on their homework? He was definitely the only one to bring so many toys along. A distracting monologue later and one little toy is left on the SHIELD bridge to stay.

"He'd have to heat the cube to 120-million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

Tony had started his tech talk just to watch everyone else's confusion and irritation, but Bruce surprises him by joining in. Someone who speaks his language. About time.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." It's a silent challenge as he walks closer, testing the doctor.

"Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet." Bruce states. There it was. Not jargon to impress Tony, not an attempt to prove his intelligence, just conversational discussion of thermonuclear astrophysics like it was as simple as talking about rain in England.

It's genuine when he says it's a pleasure to meet Bruce. "Your work on antielectron collisions is unparalleled, and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster." Tony compliments honestly, but Bruce looks caught off guard and unsure what to say other than a small "thank you". Well, that was going to have to be fixed.

The reason why Bruce is so twitchy is obvious. The whole damn crew and the other so-called heroes were treating him like a bomb waiting to go off and that was definitely another thing that Tony needed to fix. Sure, Bruce was only supposed to be there to find the cube, but they might just need the Hulk when it came down to the Chitauri coming through. Novice move though it was, Tony was depending on it because Loki sure as Hell couldn't be trusted to save anyone's ass but his own.

On the plus side, even Fury suggested the scientists work together on finding the cube. On the down side, after that point in the conversation, Tony lost interest. Standing around was getting on his nerves quickly as people kept trying to both watch and ignore the Hulk in the room. Steve finally understood a reference and Tony couldn't suppress an eye roll because of course Steve would know _that _movie. Must. Get. Out. Now.

"Shall we play, Doctor?"

Bruce seems grateful to escape as well and gestures out. "This way, sir." There's relief in his voice and Tony takes responsibility for it.

**xXx**

"The gamma rays are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract, but it's going to take weeks to process." In the lab, Bruce is still tense, but Tony is staying calm.

What would normally take weeks, Tony provides an opportunity for a shortcut with his toys. The more focus is on the scepter and off the cube, the better. If he can subtly help that and maybe sabotage the cube search a little, all the better. Bruce might have only packed his toothbrush, but word through the lines is that where Bruce had been hiding himself, technology was damn near non-existent and for a brilliant mind like Bruce's to go to waste, Tony nearly weeps at the thought of it. He would do well at Stark Tower. So what if he broke Harlem? Tony built the R&D levels with himself in mind and an overindulgent man in a flying metal suit does not make a little mess when things go wrong.

It couldn't hurt to take a little test though, so he picks up the tiny pen, promises stress-free environments, and jabs an electric shock into the side of a man that could crush Tony's entire body with one fist. Bruce jolts and Tony leans in with no regard to personal space, seeing nothing but the scientist staring back in disbelief that someone actually tried to induce the hulk. Just Tony's luck, Steve comes in admonishing right on cue. Not a single tinge of green to Banner's skin though. Impressive.

"Are you nuts?" Steve says and Tony gives as curt a reply as he can.

"Jury's out." Back to the now faintly smiling Bruce. Tony is taking responsibility for the visible lack of tension too. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?" There is no one in the world that Tony has more respect for right now; Bruce Banner, not only a brilliant mind, but also master of a power that could probably give Loki and Thor together a run for their money.

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve is still acting like a brave Captain despite Tony's complete lack of giving a shit.

"Funny things are." Tony has to pretend he didn't hear Bruce laughing under his breath. The meddlesome captain accuses Tony of endangering everyone and that's laughable because is Tony the only one _l__ooking_ here? Bruce is owning this thing. Shocks, tension, everything, and he isn't twitching at all. His only discomfort seems to be from the people treating him like he's fragile and Tony damn well knows how that feels.

Tony gives sound advice to strut and Steve fusses like a mother hen again. Time for Operation: Divert Suspicion Elsewhere. Fury is a good bet. Tony could use some extra minds helping him figure out all of SHIELD's secrets anyway. "Fury's a spy. Captain, he's _the_ spy." Tony pops a blueberry in his mouth and nods towards Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

Bruce tries to evade, but Steve presses and with great hesitance, Bruce sighs. "'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

"I heard it."

"Well, I think that was meant for you." Bruce points to Tony. Not only suspicious but actively thinking then. Where has this man been all of Tony's life? It might be condescending to pat Bruce on the head though, so Tony does the second best thing and shares his food as a sign of solidarity and encouragement. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it's been all over the news."

"The Stark Tower?" Steve looks confused at the connection before the edge of his lips turn up slightly. "That big ugly-" the smile falls when Tony turns "-building in New York?"

Conversation resumes, but Tony doesn't stop staring at Steve, the corner of his lips turned up in amusement while he plots all the subtle ways he could pay Steve back for that comment. His ego-stroking at hearing someone compliment his tower by stating the unbiased facts draws his attention back though and Tony simplifies for Steve.

"So why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" All valid questions and from the sound of it, something that's been on Bruce's mind.

Tony pulls out his StarkPhone to check on JARVIS's progress in hacking SHIELD's confidentials. Steve looks appalled, but really, what had he been expecting? Uptight Cap won't even acknowledge the food offering. Steve offers his own theories, simple-minded in nature though they are, and of course brings up orders. Yeah, Tony Stark does not follow.

"And you're all about style, aren't you?"

Another jab at Tony's taste? Third time in three minutes? Well, if Steve was going for petty, Tony could certainly grapple with the best of them there. "Of all the people in this room, which one is a: wearing a spangly suit, and b: not of use?"

"Steve," Bruce tries to defuse things. "Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."

Steve's expression is mixed, but his instincts and ingrained sense of loyalty to an organization that hadn't earned it overrule the intelligence Tony knows is hidden under layers of duty and honor. "Just find the cube." He says and leaves.

Disappointment rages in Tony, but it barely shows on the outside. He should be used to it by now, but it's still depressing when good fighters are allied on the wrong side. It means Tony will have to fight him one day and he won't hesitate in doing what he has to in order to win. Steve may see Tony as a nuisance now, another brain in a lab, and a means to an end just like Howard Stark was before, but he won't stay that way forever. Tony supposes he should be enjoying what little civility there is now before it goes to hell. Because it will go to hell and he'll be the cause of it.

Hiding his frustration, Tony returns to work, needing it to help him focus on his own goals.

He still ends up voicing his irritation though and Bruce listens surprisingly well. "Guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us." Bruce says.

"What he's got is an Acme dynamite kit." Tony answers, walking across the lab to his own equipment again. "It's gonna blow up in his face. And I'm going to be there when it does." Loki was powerful, no doubt, but he was still playing with far too many flames to come out on the other side of this without second degree burns at best.

"Yeah, I'll read all about it." Bruce swipes a scan over to Tony's screen. Maybe Bruce would escape; the more likely possibility was Hulk would stretch his muscles and Tony wasn't afraid to say it. A bitter laugh escapes the scientist as he talks of his "condition" with nothing but contempt for it. "I'm exposed. Like a nerve."

Tony is not volunteering for feelings sharing time; that is not what it is happening here. More like a "share stories about things that should have killed us but instead saved our life" sort of thing. Shrapnel being kept at bay by an arc reactor implanted in his chest definitely rated as one of those. "This little circle of light is a part of me now," he confides, "not just armor." He peers through the clear screen and ignores all the data in favor of focusing on Bruce. "It's a terrible privilege." As much as he hated it at one point, it is a part of him now.

"But _you_ can control it."

"Because I learned how."

Bruce shakes his head, trying to go back to work. "It's different."

Obviously, it's not since Bruce has control over the Hulk now and just lacks the confidence to realize it. He lives in fear of this beast inside him and hates company comprised of either the inevitable wary glances of everyone that knows what he has roiling under the surface or the people that have no idea and he has to be even more cautious around to avoid a trigger. Tony was neither and he was going to prove it.

"Hey," he sweeps all the distractions to the side of the screen, "I read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

Bruce looks incredulous and reluctant to even mention his affliction or the event that brought it about. "The other guy saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

Even Tony doesn't know that precisely. Contrary to his ego, he doesn't have all the knowledge in universes know and unknown. Instead of getting snarky with Bruce though, Tony smiles. "I guess we'll see."

"You may not enjoy that."

"And you just might." Tony is sure Bruce will, actually.

**xXx**

They fall into a companionable silence for a little while, Bruce a focused worker while Tony floats around the room from screen to screen, changing scanner settings here and there, adding in a few extra programs to SHIELD's systems where he can stash them without notice. If Bruce recognizes that Tony is planting bugs to slither their way deep into SHIELD coding as soon as JARVIS finishes decrypting everything, well, the scientist doesn't make any note of it. As he admitted, he was suspicious too.

By the time they start a real conversation again, the sun is starting to rise, only God knew how long it had been since they had sleep, and Tony is bored of percolating on everything all in his head. "So while we're sitting here," Tony sits cross-legged on a table with one screen pulled in front of him. "I'm propositioning your brain."

Bruce only glances up from his work, silently acquiescing for Tony to keep going.

"A cast out god, fell through space, landed here, somehow managed to get himself an army, and, of all the worlds, he wants to rule ours? Why?"

"Why question someone that's obviously had his sanity snapped into bits and stomped under foot?" He turns back to the tablet in his hand. "His actions aren't logical."

"Maybe they are and we just aren't looking at it the right way." A pop up appears on the screen, denying Tony access to the files he's attempting to hack, but he brushes it away and keeps going. "This army he's bringing, they've got to have a home world somewhere. Home world means bigger fish controlling the armies, handing over the reins to Loki for some reason, but why? And why here? If there are other realms and world, why pick earth of all places?"

"Because... what, they want something that's on earth? Send Loki and he assumes all failure if it goes wrong. If he succeeds, they get what they want and they take the win for the credit."

"So the question goes to what they want from earth. What's so valuable that they'll commandeer an ancient god to steal it for them."

"There could be a million things an alien wants. Something we might not have found yet." Bruce shakes his head, putting the tablet down and going instead to the look over the scepter again. "It's questioning the motives of a broken man with the power of a god and a penchant for mischief."

"Closer, Doc, but still off."

"Why are _you_ questioning him?"

Tony glances back at Bruce. "Because Loki is obviously clever. An artist in his own medium. Stuttgart was violent, but it was perfect chaos and I doubt Barton had anything to do with the planning there. No, Stuttgart, that setup was a statement; it had style."

_And you're all about style, aren't you?_

The words are far too close to home and even Tony blinks and temporarily falls silent at the recognition. Maybe there are other reasons that he and Loki spark off each other so easily. They're frighteningly alike in some aspects and that hadn't escaped Tony's notice, but he was just now realizing how much they really had in common down to "Daddy didn't love me" issues and their showy nature. Too bad Loki is about as trustworthy as a snake and just as hard to tie down.

He tries pushing the revelation away, but it's a little late as the look on Bruce's face says he's connected the similarities too. Neither actually comments on it.

"Stuttgart was Loki, world domination isn't. There's an underlying something here. With Loki and with SHIELD." Tony evades and redirects back to SHIELD as another file locks him out. Frowning, he pulls out his StarkPhone and makes a few adjustments before the security warning disappears from the hanging screen and Tony can return to working on the next level of firewalls. "Someone's got a heart under their floorboards or an evil alien threatening them into villainy somewhere."

"Maybe Loki's not being threatened in coercion."

"You going to believe Point Break's story about Loki? Family doesn't mean they actually knew him. Obviously Thor didn't know him as well as he thought." He steals his bag of blueberries from the other side of the table again and pops a couple berries in his mouth. "Come on, Bruce, you've got an analytical mind. Ask questions, don't take SHIELD's reports as unadulterated truth. There are more variables here, we just have to find them."

"'We'?" It's sad how skeptical Bruce is and Tony just wants to point him to a mirror and point out how very controlled he is. It couldn't have escaped his attention how much calmer he was around Tony simply because of the way Tony wasn't tensed up around Bruce.

"Damn right, we do. _We_ have to find them because no one else is going to. Everyone else is too worried that you're going to Hulk out even though it's damn obvious that the 'other guy' is answering to you now, not the other way around." The complete confidence in Tony's voice actually gets Bruce to glance back to Tony again. "When they're not worrying about you, they're fussing over whether I'm doing something I'm not supposed to. Of course, there is a little more foundation for that concern, obviously." He gestures to the screen that's slowly breaking down the barriers on every secure file SHIELD has. What he isn't mentioning is that as soon as the files are unlocked, JARVIS is keeping a copy of each one and saving them to a server safer than SHIELD's pitiful attempts at security.

"I have complete confidence in you, Dr. Banner. If anyone can figure out all the dirty little secrets, we can. Wouldn't even take long of putting our heads together."

Before either man can say anything else, the screen in front of Tony beeps as the decryption finishes and he swivels himself back to it again. What the hell was "Phase 2" and why was it buried so deep in the files? "I think we found our cereal prize at the bottom of the box, Doctor." He smiles.


	4. Chapter 4: In the Midst of Traitors

**AN:** Is it just me or are these chapters getting progressively longer?

Also, movie binging gets me noticing little things when I try to rewrite them. Like Fury letting Tony know about the engines before Tony even suits up. BUT HOW. It's like everyone has an invisible Bluetooth headset in their ear. Including Cap. Super. Therefore my masterful work of fixing said oopsie by glazing over it like a fucking pro. You're welcome.

**_Chapter summary:_**_ A little more Loki, Tony doesn't know who the hell he's siding with, and we can all agree that shit happens when people don't say everything they should._

* * *

**Chapter Four: In the Midst of Traitors**

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" Nick Fury isn't looking his best right now and their current debacle was likely to blame.

"Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you." Tony retorts.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We are." Bruce cuts in, pointing towards the corner of the lab with the equipment dedicated to the Tesseract search. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within a half a mile."

"Yeah, then you get your cube back. No muss, no fuss." Tony looks back to the screen in front of him as it reveals more information. "What _is_ 'Phase 2'?"

Steve slams what looks like the equivalent of a hand cannon on the table in the middle of the room. "'Phase 2' is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons. Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me."

Tony smiles. Good boy, Steve. Looks like there were upsides to Tony shouldering his way onto the helicarrier after all. Meet Bruce, implant coding in SHIELD, steal secure files, turn the supersolider... Loki should be giving him a freaking award for this; Tony can say that he has completely earned the Tesseract now.

Fury unsuccessfully tries to brush off the discovery as "gathering everything related", but he picks just the wrong time as JARVIS delves deeper into the Phase 2 files and pulls up a handy new bargaining chip. Tony hops down from the table and interrupts, spinning the screen around to show the class. "I'm sorry, Nick, what were you lying?" Schematics on the screen are clearly instructional diagrams on the construction of a new weapon.

"I was wrong, Director." Steve hasn't moved an inch, every bit the imposing super soldier Tony had heard stories of. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

Natasha comes in the side door with Thor and Bruce rounds on her. "Did you know about this?" Natasha has the guts to try and nicely tell Bruce to butt out, but that makes things worse and Bruce laughs bitterly.

"Loki is manipulating you." She says.

"And you're doing what exactly?" Bruce is possibly the only person Tony has seen yet that takes no shit from Widow.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy." Bruce turns the screen and looks between Fury and Natasha, his voice following his rising anger. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction." Tony stands back, observing the whole thing and watching for the tells on the SHIELD agents' faces. Natasha is hard to read, but Fury is wearing his feelings out there on his sleeves.

"Because of him." Fury says, gesturing at Thor and everyone stops. The god looks the most confused of the bunch though. "Last year, earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town." Tony knew that though; the files on Thor were extensive and he found quite a few extras digging in SHIELD files as well, but he fakes surprise for the audience. "We learned that not only are we not alone, we are hopelessly, _hilariously _outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet." Even Thor looks affronted and Tony can't blame him when a big government is trying to shift the blame of their shit onto Thor's mantle.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you? The world's filling up with people that can't be matched, that can't be controlled." Fury says rather pointedly and it takes everything to resist an eye roll.

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve questions.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies." Thor adds. "It is a signal that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."

And doesn't that just sound like fun.

"You forced our hand." Does Fury actually believe the bullshit he's spewing? "We had to come up with-"

"A nuclear deterrent." Tony interrupts, his nerves fraying. "Because that always calms everything right down." This was getting obscenely out of hand. SHIELD was responsible for its own mania and no one else should have to shoulder that.

Fury turns his attention to Tony now. "Remind me how you made your fortune again, Stark."

Steve steps up this time, but what falls from his mouth is unwanted this time. "I'm sure if Stark still made weapons, we'd all be neck deep in-"

"Wait, wait, hold on, how is this now about me?" What happened to SHIELD being war mongering assholes?

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" It's a fake apology from Steve and it only makes what was previously a whisper turn into a roar inside Tony's head that screamed to shove those words back in his mouth.

"I thought humans were more evolved than this."

"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?" Fury is continuing, but Tony's focus is on the star-spangled man instead.

"You realize this is insane, right?" Tony's eyes narrow as Steve stares back, jaw set. "What is it about me that bothers you do much? I'm curious." _Go on and confess, Steve. Or is that stick up your ass just making you irritable?_

"Captain America's on threat watch?" Bruce says and garners Tony's attention for only a moment.

"Wait, you're on that list?" Tony turns back to Steve with amusement while the internal voice goads him on to _fight, fight, fight_. "Are you above or below angry bees?"

"Stark, so help me god, if you make one more wisecrack-" Steve starts to threaten, but Tony cuts him off.

"Threat! Verbal threat, I feel threatened!"

"You should some some respect."

"Respect what?" Respect Steve? No way in hell. This was the guy his dad so idolized, this was the guy that Howard Stark spent more time with than his own son, this was Steve Rogers, the scrawny little kid from Brooklyn that would have been stuck picking up scrap metal if it weren't for scientists like Dr. Erskine and Howard Stark. If anyone should be showing some respect here, it should be guy that wouldn't even be alive if it wasn't for Tony's dad.

The tense conversation devolves into an argument that devolves further into petty insults and anything anyone could say to strip the others' nerves. The one to finally bring his voice above the din ends up being - no surprise - Thor. "You speak of control, yet you court chaos." He is definitely the scary kind of angry, but frankly, everyone in this room was dangerous when mad and Thor was just another number in the equation.

"What are we? A team?" Bruce is twitching, anger no longer hiding under the surface but out in the open now. "No, no, no, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb." Hulk wasn't the problem here, it was this ragtag bunch of raging egos shoved into one room.

"You need to step away." Nick warns again and Tony has had enough.

"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Just to aggravate Steve further, Tony sets a hand on the supersoldier's shoulder only to have it batted away as soon as he touched it.

"You know damn well why! Back off!"

For one moment of blinding, barely contained anger, Tony is silent. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me." His voice drops low but Steve only scoffs mutely and steps in closer, circling behind Tony.

"Yeah, big man in a suit of armor." It's only because doing something rash would blow his cover that Tony doesn't throw a well-deserved punch into the lab rat's jaw. "Take that away, what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." All four things that Steve could never dream to achieve.

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself."

Who else would Tony fight for? Pepper was the only one that hadn't betrayed him yet. Everyone else came in, stole him, stole his weapons, stole the arc reactor from his very chest, his suits... What the hell else could he fight for?

"You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play." Steve continues. "To lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

Ah, of course. Steve was a better person because he would sacrifice himself rather than taking five seconds to find an easier way that meant everyone surviving. How silly of Tony not to notice. "I think I would just cut the wire."

Despite the smile on Steve's face, it's not amusement. "Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop acting like a hero."

Since when did Tony act like a hero? If anything, he was acting like a threat. He took matters into his own hands constantly, he flies around the world fighting, refuses to hand over his technology, kills his own foster father, in what way has he ever acted like anything ibut/i a threat?

"A hero? Like you?" It sounds more spiteful than he had intended as he steps into Steve's space and faces the soldier regardless of petty height differences. "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

"Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds."

Tony's anger shatters fractionally, just enough to bring his thoughts to a stutter as Thor laughs. "You people are so petty. And tiny."

The whispers shriek into higher pitch, a shrill and whining tone that's bordering painful and Tony rubs his eyes with the back of one hand, trying to regain himself as the others in the room speak up again. Fury starts an order to Natasha to "escort" Bruce out, but he doesn't get the chance to finish before Bruce interrupts.

"Where? You rented my room."

"The cell was just in case-"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't. I know; I tried." No one speaks, Bruce can't even look embarrassed or ashamed about it. More than ever, Tony wants to reach out to Bruce, to offer the companionship that the scientist so obviously needs, that maybe they both need, but he can't so he stays where he is. "I got low." Bruce explains. "I didn't see an end. So, I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So I moved on. I focused on helping people; I was _good_. Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk."

He shifts back towards the table at his back, eyes still on the faces around the room while his hand moves of its own accord. "You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You want to know how I stay calm?" He grips the scepter and pulls it from its stand to hang by his side. Both SHIELD agents touch their weapons as Tony panics internally. It was just made explicitly clear what would happen if they shot Bruce and they didn't need Hulk romping through here. Bruce had control over the Hulk normally, but he was battling it now.

"Dr. Banner," Steve speaks first, even and firm. "Put down the scepter."

Bruce pauses and he glances down to the staff as if just now realizing it was there. There's a ring from across the room that makes nearly everyone jump and Bruce puts down the scepter. "Sorry, kids, you don't get to see my party trick after all." He says, pulling himself out of the circle to check on the scanners and leaving Tony to inwardly curse that he hadn't sabotaged the search better than this.

"I could get there fastest." Tony volunteers.

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard. No human is a match for it." Thor says, but Tony would like to see him try and steal the cube again.

When Tony tries to leave out the side door, Steve jerks him back with a hold on Tony's arm. "You're not going alone!"

Tony jerks away. "You're going to stop me?"

"Put on the suit, let's find out." He echoes and Tony feels the challenge in the words, wants to accept.

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man."

"Put on the suit." Steve enunciates.

"Oh, my god." Bruce looks up in horror, mouth open, the Tesseract's location on tip of his tongue when fire erupts from the center of the room and six bodies are flung back through glass and against walls to land pained and disoriented.

"Put on the suit." Steve's voice has a whole different tone to it now; no challenge, no distaste, just an unspoken acknowledgement that Tony is needed right now as they both scramble to their feet and race down the hall with Steve's hands on Tony's back to keep him upright when he stumbles.

"Sounds like Barton arrived!" Tony manages in their panic to haul ass to the cargo bay where Tony's suit is.

"I knew Loki was too easy to catch!"

"Good for you, Rogers, you figured it out. Didn't help us much earlier, did it?"

Steve glares, but it doesn't stick when they're dodging debris and agents scrambling to assess and fix damage.

The soldier may have only one focus, but Tony's mind is back to its race of processing details and outcomes, possibilities and likelihoods. Deciphering Loki's motives was about as productive as quizzing Steve on pop culture, but Tony could piece together the obvious and make his deductions.

Fact: Loki wanted on the helicarrier. Tony's help was enlisted but not needed; that was more conjecture based the fact that Loki was a god and could just as easily duke it out with Cap and give in when he got bored. Fact: with Tony on board with SHIELD, the Tesseract's search could be monitored and/or sabotaged. Fact: "assisting" with the cube would put Tony in the lab with Dr. Banner during the explosion. Theory: the explosion was also part of Loki's plan just as his show in Stuttgart was an extravagant distraction. Some faces are just a crime to hide behind masks all the time, so of course Tony wouldn't be walking around with his suit on; thereby making Tony defenseless during the explosion. Fact: Loki wasn't an idiot, so he could put these pieces together just as easily and warn Tony if his life was at risk.

Conclusion based on this information: Loki garnered Tony's alliance just to get him on board the doomed SHIELD ship.

Meaning: Loki wanted Tony dead from the start.

It should have been a compliment that Tony was considered enough of a threat for a god to want him dead, but he couldn't stop the familiar sting of betrayal from rearing up. Not trusting Loki was one thing, but Tony had far from expected an attempt on his life.

Then again, what made Tony think in the first place that Loki would keep his promise to Tony and not anyone else? The cube was powerful; of course Loki would want it for himself. Ruling the earth could have been the goal the entire time. Maybe the story of the Chitauri's abuse was a lie. The only thing he did know was that he couldn't believe a word the god had told him. Hell, he couldn't believe in anything now.

This was what Tony got for trusting the God of Lies: royally fucked and damn near killed. If he didn't get to his suit and fix the falling airship, he would be dead, along with everyone else on board. SHIELD, he couldn't care less for, but he wanted to keep Bruce. So Hulk was indestructible; he still liked the guy enough to give a shit what happened to him.

_"No. 3 Engine is down." _Tony heard Agent Hill announcing before there was a long pause. _"Somebody's gotta get outside and patch that engine."_ Well, two guesses who was going to be volunteered for that job.

_"Stark, you copy that?"_

Surprise, surprise.

"I'm on it." Tony was already turning the corner and pulling up the remote suit controls. "Engine three, I'll meet you there." He says to Steve and the soldier rushes off as the Mark VI comes to life and he suits up as quickly as physically possible.

Steve is waiting when Tony gets to the damaged engine, diagnostics running through the plans he skimmed from SHIELD's files, what should be working, what isn't working, what has to be done first. "I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position." He points to where Steve needs to go before Tony knocks a few bits of debris out of the way and makes his way into a shaft inside the wing that should take him straight to the rotors. "What does it look like in there?"

_"It seems to run on some form of electricity."_ Cap sounds irritated and Tony sighs.

"Well, you're not wrong." _But I was hoping for a bit more usefulness out of you._ So instead Tony has to explain in excruciating detail what the relays are supposed to look like while he's blasting through craploads of debris every few feet. Steve finally confirms that they're intact by the time Tony gets through to the motionless blades and diagnostics flash over the HUD again. Clearing the rotors won't be enough; they need something to force them into motion. He's helpfully reminded how dangerous that is as if the HUD hasn't told him the same thing and is already providing a way out.

"That stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage maglev and that could-"

_"Speak English!"_

Good God, Rogers. How does this man survive day to day life anymore? "See that red lever? It'll slow down the rotors long enough for me to get out. Stand by it. Wait for my word." At least that was one thing Steve was good for.

The large slab of ship that was lodged in the turbines had be cut with a laser, but fell out easily enough with a solid shove. Time is running out though as the helicarrier takes a heavy tilt towards one side, meaning one of the other engines must have failed. Great. It's either get this one up and running or leave everyone still on board to fall in an almighty crash to the earth. No pressure, Tony.

_"Stark, we're losing altitude."_ Fury supplies because clearly Tony hadn't noticed a large ship leaning towards his little bitty self and the big numbers on the HUD reading 14,000 feet and falling quickly.

He pushes against the rotor until it starts to budge past the damaged sides and crumpled metal plating. It's moving but not fast enough. Inhaling, he sets his shoulders and shoves as hard as he can even as warnings flash across the display in front of his eyes. Tony is pretty sure this is riskier than his usual flights. Then again, he doesn't usually push hard enough to start overloading his propulsion core. "Cap, hit the lever." Sooner would be better than later. A whole variety of warnings and dangers for G-LOC and vertical drag were in red letters across the HUD.

_"I need a minute here!"_

Tony doesn't even have fifteen seconds.

"Lever. _Now_."

The turbine speeds up until Tony is no longer putting any weight behind it. Worse still, it gets ahead of him. In the span of a few seconds, his back hits the rotor behind him, he slips, and is thrown under the rotors with metal grinding on metal as he tumbles for the longest few seconds of his life. Cap must have figured out the lever finally since Tony falls out and takes another few seconds to stabilize himself midair. He's damn lucky he can fly at all right now.

Steve's delay is obvious when Tony comes around to find a supposed SHIELD agent trying to kill Tony's helper. In an effort to land before the boot stabilizers cut out again and to keep Steve from inconveniently dying, Tony flies in and tackles the agent only to land flat on his back beside him seconds before the HUD flickers out. And this would be the end of the Mark VI.

When Steve gets down, Tony is still laying there, just now pulling off his helmet. "That was fun. Let's _not_ do that again, okay?"

"You got the rotors going though. Probably saved a couple hundred lives of the SHIELD agents on this ship." Steve says, holding out a hand to help Tony. Surprising even himself, Tony takes it and uses it to pull up to standing position.

"Also saved myself, didn't I?" Tony smiles even though Steve shakes his head, but he doesn't miss the faint smile on the soldier's face. Ridiculous always entertains.

Steve jumps back up to the balcony to get a better view of the shore they came so close to crashing into, but Tony doesn't get the chance to ask what Steve is looking for.

_"Agent Coulson is down."_ Tony hates how clear Fury's voice is; maybe if it wasn't, he could have deluded himself into thinking he misheard. Someone announces a medical team is on the way, but it's too late. _"They called it."_ Fury says and for a moment, Tony is at a complete loss for words and thoughts.

He stays quiet while taking off the damaged suit, he does nothing other than inhale and exhale on the way to the bridge, even the bickering between Steve and him was put on hold. Fury is waiting when they arrive, just the playboy and the supersoldier at the table while Fury stands. Widow is down in the infirmary with a recovering Clint, Bruce Hulked out and attacked both Thor and a fighter jet before being thrown off towards land somewhere, Thor was gone along with the cage that held Loki, and last but not least, Loki was gone. _With the scepter._

All a ploy and Tony played right into his hands. How many times did Tony have to put faith in someone that would turn around to stab him in the back before he got the memo? No one was safe. Not SHIELD, not those he thought of as family, not the villains. Where the hell did Tony fit in this god forsaken world?

Fury tosses a set of blood-tipped cards across the table; Phil's, Tony knew. Vintage set. It had taken him years to collect mementos of his hero. SHIELD was full of bastards, but Phil had garnered Tony's rarely earned respect over the years. The agent was cut from tougher stuff and was the only agent Tony knew to differentiate himself with a unique personality. Captain America trading cards and a liking for Supernanny and the ability to deliver a hell of a threat with the straightest face Tony has ever seen. Always the agent with that little smile at the corners of his mouth like he remembered a joke and was just keeping it to himself. He didn't deserve this kind of exit.

The director continued with the unnecessary details of what they didn't have anymore: no comms, no location on the Tesseract, down two champions. He admits their plans to make an arsenal from the Tesseract, but claims it wasn't where they really had their faith. "There was an idea." Fury says. "Stark knows this."

Tony scoffs silently, looks away because he did know exactly what Fury was going to bring up and Tony had heard this tune before.

"'The Avengers Intiative.' The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them, to fight the battles we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."

Tony gets up and leaves without another word, leaving Fury to guilt trip Steve a little longer. He'd had enough of this pandering, this manipulation, enough being convinced into things he shouldn't be involved with because someone catered to his emotions. Tony wasn't heartless, but he was tired. There was a dull ache in every muscle of his body and it wasn't going to get any better if he went off to face Loki on a revenge scheme. Obviously the god had an upper hand and he was using it burning every bridge he crossed.

Without even realizing it, Tony finds himself in the detention area, staring down at the empty space where Loki's cell had been. It's where Steve finds him later and neither one speaks at all for several minutes.

"Was he married?" Steve asks.

"No." He answers. "There was a cellist, I think." God, should he find out who it was? Should he tell them? Would SHIELD? Pepper would know what to do.

"I'm sorry." Steve says, but he didn't know enough about Phil to feel it. "He seemed like a good man."

Good? Was that the word? No. Tony finally looks up. "He was an idiot."

The sympathy in Steve's expression fractures into confusion. "Why? For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone." He steps away from the edge, walks back towards Steve.

"He was doing his job."

Tony scoffs openly. "He was out of his league." Billionaires with god complexes were not the same as a real god. "He should have waited. He should have-"

"Sometimes, there isn't a way out, Tony."

God, not that again. Done with this conversation, Tony starts to leave again. "Right. I heard that before."

That should have been the last word, but damn Steve had to interject again. "Is this the first time you lost a soldier?"

"_We are_ not _soldiers_." He enunciates, unable to quell the red that flared up behind his eyes. It takes him a moment to calm again and even then, he glances away as he speaks. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I. He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does." At least Steve got one thing right. "But right now, we've got to put that behind us and get this done." And back to the job again. What happened to the soldier's heart? "Now, Loki needs a power source." Tony glances to the blood stain on the wall and feels his gut clench. "If we can put together a list-"

_That's it._ "He made it personal." Tony interrupts.

"That's not the point."

"That_ is_ the point. That's _Loki's_ point." Of course, how had he missed it? His mind is racing ahead to make connections and put together all the wires that had been hanging there with no plugs to light them up and make their purpose known. Now it was coming together. "He hit us right where we live. Why?"

"To tear us apart."

"Yeah, divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants." That was why Tony had to go. Tony wanted the Tesseract, Tony was in the running for the world, Tony was in the way. SHIELD was too and of course they would call on Hulk and Cap to fight, so they would have to go as well. "He wants to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it... He wants an audience."

"Right. I caught his act in Stuttgart."

"Yeah, that's just previews. This is opening night. And Loki, he's a full tilt diva, right?" Tony's hands are gesticulating for emphasis, twitching with the energy pulsing through him as he solves the puzzle. "He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered-" They both stop and even Steve connects it. Shit. Tony even _told_ Loki about it. "Son of a bitch."

"The Tower? You think he's going for the Stark Tower?" Steve follows behind as Tony takes to the hallways. He needs to fix his suit and get back there as fast as possible. The Chitauri will flood the city as soon as the portal is open and they haven't got much time. "Can he even get in?"

Wouldn't be the first time, but Tony can't admit to that. "He's a sorcerer, Rogers. He can get anywhere he damn well wants."

"Surely you would have higher security."

Tony ignores the part of that that sounds like an insult. "JARVIS can only do so much against magic. I don't really account for that in my defenses." They didn't even know it _existed_ until Thor's appearance the summer before. "Think about it: what better humiliation than to put a portal on top of my tower to summon his alien army? It's akin to _art_, Rogers. Like you said, it's all about style."

Steve gets a funny look and starts to say something before Tony cuts him off again.

"You want orders, soldier? Go find Agent Romanoff. See if she can fly one of those jets. You'll need something to travel in. I'm going to get the suit in flying condition, let me know when you've got a flight, I'll fly ahead and see if I can stop Loki or the cube. In case I can't, make sure you're prepared for full-scale battle. Think Nazis from outer space, Captain. Best weapons you've got."

Giving the soldier a pat on the shoulder, Tony departs one way while Steve is forced to go the other way for Natasha.

Tony pulls off bits of his suit and fixes what needs it most, but if he had a choice, he wouldn't trust this mark to walk across the street. It's been hit with magic hammers, bolts of lightning, run through a turbine, and all in the last twenty-four hours. Not including everything before. It's what he has to work with though, so it's what he's going to use to get there.

He suits up and takes to the skies just in time for Steve to come through the comms. It's a little more garbled with the suit in this condition though.

_"Stark, we're taking off."_

"Already out, Cap. See you in New York."

He gets out just ahead of the quinjet and overtakes the craft, leaving it in his wake as he races for Manhattan as fast as a glitching suit will allow. It's agonizingly long to him when he's worried about the possibility of the portal being open and not a particularly easy flight when the stabilzers on his feet short out every few seconds. By the time he gets there, thankfully, everything is still intact on his tower and there aren't any gaping maws in open space. On the downside, JARVIS already turned off the arc reactor and it did nothing to stop the Tesseract from turning on. Energy source, of course. The machine is set up on top of the tower though and Selvig is monitoring it.

"Shut it down, Dr. Selvig." Tony warns as Selvig smiles up to him.

"It's too late! She can't stop now. She wants to show us something! A new universe!"

That didn't sound foreboding at all. Since cutting the power didn't help, next best thing? Blowing it up. How could that hurt?

Turned out hurting a lot when the repulsors rebound back off a barrier surrounding the entire machine.

_"The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable."_

"Yeah, I got that." Getting thrown backward does make an impression. "Plan B." He glances down to see Loki standing on the balcony.

_"Sir, the Mark VII is not ready for deployment."_

"Then skip the spinning rims! We're on the clock." From one badly damaged suit to a barely tested model, Tony lands on his specialized deck and has the machines dismantle the suit as Loki follows him inside from the balcony.

His sense of self-perservation takes this moment to remind him that he's alone with the same man who wants him dead and he's taking off his suit for it.

This is a _horrible_ idea.

When they're both inside, Loki is nothing but calm and at ease, striding towards Tony with the scepter in one hand as he exudes confidence and Tony slips into his own posturing. "You survived SHIELD's craft and the Beast." He says, smiling. "My confidence was not misplaced."

"Kind of busy outside when Bruce Hulked out." He makes a point to call him "Bruce", far too much respect for the scientist to just call him by an alter ego. "Earned myself a drink though for that feat of daring. You don't get one though, Prancer. Not when I did all the work." Loki nods his head and switches the scepter between hands. "Suppose I should be flattered you thought of me." The god raises an eyebrow in questioning. "You did want me dead, right?"

"Stark, if I wanted you dead, you would already be nothing but parts and bodily fluids staining the rug. Why waste time allowing you on the craft?"

"Thor isn't dead. Thought you hated that blond jock." Tony reasons on his way to the bar.

"I never said I wanted Thor dead." One armored shoulder rolls elegantly. "Merely injured extensively and repeatedly. He's not my brother, but I did grow up with the wretch. I know for a fact he is rather difficult to kill."

"So, what? The helicarrier explosion was just for shits and giggles?"

"You're a man with a flying suit of armor. I assumed you would be able to escape. Obviously I was not wrong."

"But if I had died, you would mourn me about as much as you would mourn SHIELD and the other Avengers." Loki's head tilts as he walks closer, eyebrows furrowed at the unfamiliar name and Tony shakes it off with an eye roll and shrug, pouring his drink. "It's what we're calling ourselves. Kind of a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' type thing."

"You've allied yourself with them." The god looks beyond offended; he looks livid as if Tony is the one who betrayed their partnership.

"Yeah, well, I needed someone I could trust."

Lips pulled back in a sneer and Loki spun on his heel with coat tails curling at his heels. Tony took the opportunity to steal the honing bracelets from under the bar's ledge and slip them onto his wrists before Loki turned back.

"You do not trust me." Not a question, a statement. "But you would put your faith in those that maintain your company solely for your armor's use? They'll turn their back on you if they find out your true desires. They'll send a manhunt for you next."

"I don't trust them anymore than I trust you." Tony tucks his chin and he walks out from behind the bar with drink in hand but doesn't descend the steps. He needs those few inches of height and a few yards of distance to keep sane. Any closer and the spite he's bottled up will erupt into some epically stupid actions. "Sorry, am I supposed to be listening to the God of Lies?"

Loki's expression turns sour. "A convincing liar does not carry an inability to speak the truth as well." He growls, tension creeping into his body language to make a giant look taller. "You are hardly one to ridicule me on my trustworthiness, Mr. Stark. Tell me, how many knew of your plot for the Tesseract? Your lady _must_ have been privy." Tony's grimace says enough and Loki's mouth splits into a wide grin. "What else does she not know? I am not your only dirty secret, Stark. I am just the one that slipped through your fingers."

Tony doesn't even realize his feet are carrying him forward. "No, you're the mistake."

Green eyes flash and the buffer between them disappears in a few long-legged strides. Tony cringes, feeling the air prickle as magic gathers around the hooked scepter poised at his chest. "Remember this, Stark. I could have you under my control before you could so much as beg for mercy. Even Agent Barton could not refuse me. I could have you kneel before me." The tip of the scepter taps the reactor with the sharp ping of metal and terror ripples through him, followed by a distinct lack of climax. Loki smiles, lowering the scepter. "As your luck would have it, I have no desire for mindless slaves anymore."

Damned _tease_.

"I wouldn't side with you, mindless or not." The glare Tony receives could give frostbite. "There's no winning this battle, Loki. No throne, no great ascension. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but whatever happens, I am coming for you after it's all through, and it won't be to slap on a pair of cuffs and march you to your brother."

Loki grabs Tony by the throat and throws him to the floor with no ceremony. That didn't exactly come up as a possibility when he was debating this. "Any time now, JARVIS." It ends up as a groan under his breath as pushes himself up onto his elbows.

He doesn't get far as Loki pulls him up again, long fingers wrapped around the inventor's jaw. "Threatening a god who holds your life in his hands is ill-advised." Tony's barely listening as calls JARVIS again. "You would do well not to make the same mistake again." Loki hisses.

Tony feels it coming, sees the way muscles move in preparation, but he can't stop it. Everything in the movies about being thrown out of a window? Wrong. Shattered glass sliced his skin on the way through, blood welling up from every cut, but he could hardly register the pain while adrenaline was flooding his system. The ground is rushing towards him faster and faster and Tony is doubting the speed of his own technology in comparison to the speed he's clocking on way to the ground.

He finally feels the comforting grip of the suit wrapping around his limbs, catching himself with less than ten feet to spare. The onlookers below looked terrified, but Tony can't stop to apologize. One thing is on his mind right now and that's Loki still up in his tower. He flies back up to the window and hovers in the hole he just made with his own body. "Don't threaten the man in a suit of armor either." Loki glares and raises his staff, but Tony aims a repulsor faster than the glowstick can gather magic and Loki is cast onto his back across the floor.

The whole building trembles in time with the crack in the sky above and Tony's gaze turns upwards to see the portal opening. Time slows, a few blessed seconds of calm before the storm when all at once, dozens of small hovercrafts file out and Tony's heart drops. "Right." The HUD goes red as it changes to combat readings, listing weapons statuses, reserves. "Army."

* * *

**Endnote: **I leave you with cliffhangers because I love you.


	5. Chapter 5: Fight the Good Fight, Yeah?

**AN: **I present to my readers: the chapter that has been hating me for two weeks. Believe me when I saw I could write another massive block just listing the things that fought me and how much I cut out because it wasn't working.

_**Chapter Summary:**__ The Battle for New York, Tony curses a lot, my indulgence in timing headcanons__, the loss of a few aliens, and everyone is left to pick up the pieces a few steps behind where they left off._

* * *

**Chapter Five: Fight the Good Fight, Yeah?**

Loki had said the Chitauri were coming, but somehow, Tony had grossly underestimated the whole "alien army" thing. Hovercrafts were not on his list of expectations and damn it, wasn't that something Loki could have warned him about?

Aliens weren't going to take themselves down though, so Tony launches himself up towards the portal, dodging a shot already before taking out one craft with a repulsor blast. Another evasion, another repulsor, and then one finally manages some semblance of aim and knocks Tony off course. Screw the one by one thing. They're swarming him, flooding from the portal, and he isn't even catching half of the crafts that are just flying down into the city past Tony. He allows a few seconds for target locks and then a few dozen micro projectiles take down a good number of Chitauri in a colorful firework display of flying debris and a few softer bits that were definitely not machinery.

Fighting the Ten Rings' encampment during his escape had been one thing, but these were damned aliens on flying cycles with too many guns and numbers and Tony is quickly realizing how very outnumbered he was.

Natasha finally calls in their location and Tony could have strung out a slew of curse words in a few different languages at their arrival time. "Did you stop for drive-through?" He snaps, unfazed by the glare Widow sends him. "Swing up Park, I'm going to lay 'em out for you." Make some use of these idiots. Why had he sided with them again? Right, tenuous alliance with lying supervillain went wrong. Shame. It's a sad day when he has this ragtag group to depend on.

His peripheral catches sight of Thor and Loki on the balcony of Stark Tower and Tony is not ashamed to admit he's still rooting for Loki regardless of the betrayal. Thor is a brute, swing of a hammer to destroy his enemies while Loki is grace and sharp blades. Tony has always been averse to feats of strength over wits, so it was no surprise why he laid his money where he did. Is he going to admit this on public channels? No. He isn't an idiot and he hasn't survived this long by making stupid mistakes.

_"Sir, we have more incoming."_ Jarvis says.

"Fine, let's keep them occupied." Tony flies lower, trailing at least ten to twenty Chitauri stalkers behind him. He flies past Park as promised, but the quinjet shoots down a sad few of the pests before taking off for the Tower instead. _Can't kill Loki, can't destroy the cube, what the hell are you doing up there while there are Chitauri down here?!_ His frustration only grows when the trio proceeds to get the quinjet destroyed in a futile attempt at taking out the god. He would have said "I told you so" if he had the time, but he was kind of busy what with _single-handedly taking on an army_.

The very air trembles with a mechanical groan, the sound of metal and machinery protesting in strain of its weight. Tony spares only a moment to glance up and really, that's not helping his hopes of living through this battle, let alone winning it. Not when he's the only one fighting these things at the moment.

Almost too big to breach the portal, a monster fit more for a science fiction movie than real life appears. But who is he to call it unrealistic when he's in a flying suit of armor, fighting an alien army led by a Norse god? Right. Just call it unexpected then.

Objectively, the thing is a beauty. Armor and tech carrying something of that weight in flight is the kind of thing Tony would kill to study, but he hardly has the time for in depth analysis right now. Not when it's making a path wherever the hell it wants to go and destroying everything in the way while more Chitauri soldiers shoot themselves from the side and break into the surrounding buildings. But really, the thing _swims_ in the air like nothing Tony has ever seen and it's a gorgeous mixture of chaos and advanced technology and more than a little magic, no doubt.

_"Stark, you seeing this?"_

Well, it wasn't like Tony was busy elsewhere. He's not going to ignore a flying creature half the size of Stark Tower. Polite answers, Tony. "Seeing. Still working on believing." He is really, really still working on that last part. This is one of those times that he expected to close his eyes and wake up in a normal life not filled with aliens and gods and alliances with the very agency he hated.

"Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?" Tony needed someone else on his side because the great soldier and SHIELD's best agents weren't much help staring from the ground.

_"Banner?"_ Steve says with a great deal of incredulity in his voice and Tony kinds of wants to throw something at him. Did he stutter or something

"Just keep me posted." _Steve, you are damn useless. I need to make Pepper a suit. She'd be more help right now than you are._ "Jarvis, find me a soft spot." Hell, these specs wouldn't be bad to look over later too. Who didn't want alien tech? And Tony would be the only one to figure it out.

It finally sounds like the trio on the ground are actually doing some defending, but no one is doing anything about the worm decimating buildings and launching more foot troops along the way. Tony flies around the block and gets in front of the worm, fires a spread of flares in what he assumes is its face with the hope that it has eyes, and with a roar of annoyance, it starts turning to follow Tony. Grab monster's attention, check. What the hell was step two again? Fly away. That sounded like a good next step.

From over the comms, Thor's voice comes in over Cap's audio and Tony finds no problem with listening in. He tried to subtly reset their priorities before Thor and Clint start bickering about who gets to own Loki's ass and Tony has to suppress a shout. _Still up here, you know. Don't mind me; I'm just saving everyone from the aliens invading Manhattan right now._

He's nearly tuned the conversation out when he hears a different voice over the audio. _"So, this all seems horrible."_ Oh, please. Whatever deity is listening, please, Tony is begging not to be teased here.

Steve addresses him directly. _"Stark, we got him."_

"Banner?"

_"Just like you said."_

Thank fuck.

"Then tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you." Maybe with Bruce, two whole people could be working on the whole alien invasion thing.

Natasha doesn't sound pleased when Tony comes around the corner with the worm on his tail and if it wasn't such an inappropriate time, he would have laughed. Armored worm, meet indestructible Hulk. The metal plates peel off as its body contorts and Tony spots the open skin with delight, giving a quick warning before the worm is no more. Success for the Banner/Stark duet.

The other Chitauri make their displeasure known, but Tony is flying high in multiple meanings of the word. He hovers down a little, giving himself a quick breather for the few seconds it lasts. Three more worms appear from the portal and dozens upon dozens more hovercrafts. "Call it, Captain." Because maybe if he gave the orders, everyone would get the fuck back to work here. Containment is made priority until the portal could be closed, Barton is assigned Air Traffic Control, and Stark is assigned perimeter duty.

"Can you give me a lift?" Clint asks so nicely that Tony can't say no, so he agrees and grabs him by the back of the shirt.

"Better clench up, Legolas." It's all the warning Clint gets before Tony takes off, setting him on the rooftop with the best vantage point before Tony sets off on his own task. Steve continues giving orders and luckily, people get to it as soon as Steve finishes. While still not a fan of Thor himself, that lightning trick was pretty handy for eliminating a good fifty crafts and a couple worms from the mouth of the portal even if it took out all the glass on the Chrysler building. Whoever was paying for that was not going to have a good time when this was all over.

_"Stark, you gotta a lot of strays sniffing your tail."_ Clint warns.

"Just trying to keep 'em off the streets."

_"Well, they can't bank worth a damn. So find a tight corner."_

Oh. Well. That was actually kind of helpful. "I will roger that." Maybe he should send a fruit basket for the whole "sorry I left you to the whims of a homicidal god" debacle that Clint didn't remember. He must not remember, otherwise he'd be letting Tony take care of himself right now.

Following the advice, he weaves until one zigs instead of zags and crashes, another few lost as Tony finds a small tunnel. A close loop against the side of a building crashes a couple, Tony seeks another tunnel and nearly gets wiped out in the process but makes it out to have the last fall for flying too close to the building again. Were they not paying attention to how their comrades were dying in glorious balls of flame and flying parts?

"Nice call," Tony finds himself complimenting. "What else you got?"

_"Thor is taking on a squadron down on sixth."_

Well, Tony wasn't the only showoff in the group after all. "And he didn't invite me." It would have been a much more theatrical expression if anyone was there to witness, but no one watched the iron suit for the faces he pulled behind the mask.

"Need help, big guy?"

"The living crafts should have our focus," Thor shouts over the fighting and Tony can only guess he means the space worms. Can't really disagree either as the things are running through buildings as well as providing transport for the smaller foot-soldiers.

"Well, go have fun then. I'll clean up here." There weren't many left anyway, so Thor nods and flies off to meet the worm that Hulk is hauling around by its jaw. A half dozen aliens on their feet are easy to dispatch and Tony takes to the skies again within a few minutes.

On route back to perimeter control, the sight of Chitauri firing on their own hovercrafts was enough to draw Tony's attention and find Widow commandeering some unfortunate bastard. Tony shoots the Chitauri trying to kill her before flying lower and charging through several more on the ground. He lands to save power for a few minutes and takes out a few more Chitauri while he's there. Steve seems to appreciate the help and they make a decent pair, taking advantage of the newly found discovery that a repulsor blast reflected off of Cap's shield made for a pretty awesome looking weapon. It couldn't last long though until Tony had to get back up and peel a few more aliens climbing the sides of freaking buildings.

Human armed forces finally arrive on the streets, catching the lower flying hovercrafts, leaving still more out of range that Tony has to take care of. Thor and Hulk are plenty busy taking on worms, so it's left to Tony to patrol the vast majority of the island that Clint can't from his position. Tony is running low on all the good munitions, using repulsors and buildings as much as he can to his advantage.

_"Loki's down."_ Clint sounds so pleased, it's no guess that the archer is responsible. Tony doesn't doubt for a minute that the god will get back up though. _"Nat's made it to the Tesseract."_ Lot of good that would do, but who knew? Maybe Widow would find a workaround.

_"There's still a worm not down."_ Steve reminds.

"There now." Tony says just to stop the reminders. He gets alongside it just as it bursts straight through the middle of one skyscraper. Nothing has survived the laser yet, so he tries it, but for once, it's useless.

_"Sir, we will lose power before we penetrate that shell."_

Super. Tony really needs some of this alien tech though. Next plan. "Jarvis, you ever hear the tale of Jonah?"

_"I wouldn't consider him a role model."_ Only Jarvis could sound both concerned and so utterly done with Tony's bright ideas.

The creature roars and Tony doesn't hesitate to straight line it right inside, shooting every sidewinder he has left along the way. He explodes out the side of the tail without any time to reorient himself and gets thrown through a bus stop, finally stopping after running into a wrecked taxi cab. So much for the new suit.

_"Stark, do you hear me?"_ The list of reasons Tony does not want to hear Nick Fury's voice right now is immeasurable. _"You have a missile headed straight for the city."_ That was not on the list of expected things from the director. The panic in his voice meant that it wasn't Fury's fault though. Great, someone else over his head trying to deal with things their way.

"How long?" A Chitauri slams Tony on the back of the helmet, temporarily knocking him back to the ground.

_"Three minutes max."_ Well, that is just fantastic. So many Chitauri are attacking at once that Tony can barely see to aim his repulsors. _"The payload will wipe out midtown."_

"Jarvis, put everything we've got into thrusters."

_"I just did."_ Chitauri grip onto him as his boots thrust off from the ground but the aliens fall off once he gets about ten feet up.

"Fury, what direction am I looking in?"

_"Two unauthorized jets took off from the carrier's flight deck."_ Fury says. _"One was stopped, the other wasn't."_

"Got it." Tony adjusts his course to intercept just as Widow's voice comes over the comms.

_"I can close. Can anybody hear me? I can shut the portal down."_

_"Do it!"_ Steve answers hastily.

"No, wait." Not yet.

_"Stark, those things are still coming."_

"I've got a nuke coming in." The HUD runs a quick calculation as Tony comes into view of the missile. "It's going to blow in less than a minute." He ducks under the bridge and loops back up to follow close behind it, pushing his speed. "And I know just where to put it." Catching up to the missile isn't the hard part, but keeping his grip on it is. Once he had it though, he lets the weapon carry him to save power on his suit.

_"Stark,"_ Steve's voice sounds hesitant, _"you know that's a one way trip."_

It wasn't a full two years ago that he was almost died of palladium poisoning and he didn't get into heart-to-heart talks then, so he wouldn't now. Instead, he ignores the captain to address his AI. Jarvis is definitely who he would want to talk to more. "Save the rest for the turn, J."

_"Sir, shall I try Miss Potts?"_ Pepper's picture flashes up on the screen. All the things he could say to Pepper now... What would he tell her? Would he apologize? Would he be able to say anything at all? No lie, he did care for Pepper, but it was always going to come down to this: Tony flying off and almost dying while she had to stay and watch. There was only so much he could put the woman through before it really was heartless. But if it was his last chance to say anything...

"Might as well." He could indulge himself now, pretend that it could have worked, and allow fantasies of what life might have been like if he wasn't directing a nuclear warhead into space right now. Maybe he could have settled down; then again, maybe not. Ridiculous was the life he led and the life he liked, but for the last few minutes here, he could pretend something else. For Pepper.

He nears the Tower, firing all thrusters to turn the missile skywards and using all the power he can to keep it on course through the portal. Pepper still hasn't answered, but there isn't enough time now anyway. Everything shudders passing through and he still clutches the warhead aimed for a foreboding warship on course for the opening. All he can see is the endless stretch of space dotted with dozens more worms and hundreds of smaller crafts. This is what would sear itself onto his remaining moments, the last thing he saw with his world gone from view. The HUD going dark, all power flickering from the suit as it all narrows to the two slits of the mask. Space carries absolutely no sound, only his heart pounding inside the suit.

As his eyes close, only one word was on his mind. Nothing else could be articulated; just the single name of a god as his own body weight carried him back down and the void consumed his every sense. He couldn't bear to open his eyes again, the fear of what would greet him was overwhelming. All he could hear was screaming, high, low, cries of agony and the rough croak of a throat hoarse with overuse and still in too much pain to stop. They had to stop at some point, had to go away, just _stop_. If begging worked, Tony would be pleading right now. Anything to escape the sounds.

A roar rang out louder than anything else and Tony startled with a gasp to find the Manhattan sky staring back at him. Steve was crouching beside him and Hulk was repeating the wake-up call. "What the hell..." They all looked like shit and Tony is betting he is no exception. What he can't tell was what had happened after he blacked out. _Calm down, Tony, it was nothing. Just pull yourself together._ "What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Steve shrugs helpfully, his chest still rising and falling to catch his breath. "We won."

Tony sighs and lays his head back just to check for the portal in the sky only to find nothing. No Chitauri swarms, no more worms, just clear sky. "Alright, yay." His enthusiasm is only lacking because he can barely move his body right now. But it worked. The missile worked.

"Hurray, good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day." Take time to restore body function. And eat. God, when was the last time he ate? "Have you ever tried Shwarma?" Steve is smiling, genuine and amused and Tony files it away for future reference that yes, Steve does, in fact, find ridiculous funny. So he keeps going, suggests the restaurant down the block that he really needs to try now because who knew when something else like this would crop up and he'll die never having tasted whatever Shwarma is. That is just not acceptable.

"We're not finished yet." Thor turns out to be above his head.

"And then Shwarma after?" It had to be done.

"Loki first. Then Shwarma." Steve promises.

"Rogers, if you tease me with this, I swear to God, I will put itching powder in your spandex."

Steve huffs out a laugh with a soft exhale and offers a hand to help Tony up, but Tony will never admit out loud how helpful the hand is. Tony just manages sitting for a few minutes though before he takes off the rest of his helmet and climbs to his feet with a little more assistance from the two blonds. "I think I'll leave my suit on for the chat with Loki this time. Don't want to get thrown out the window again without it."

"Are you going to start making a habit of this 'saving people' thing?" Smug is not a good look for Captain America, but it's a curious mix between that and approval. Very, very happy approval. It's sickening.

"Don't count on it. That was my personal tower they were going to nuke, remember?" The save is unsuccessful, but Steve's expression is tolerable and it was not Tony's imagination that saw the faint glimmer of respect in the soldier's eyes and the turn of his lips. As they got back to walking, Tony quickly changes the focus of the subject by gesturing to said "saved Tower". What was left of it at least. "Look at what they did to my baby! I literally just powered it up three days ago! The construction isn't even done!" Well, he did promise the next tower would say "Potts" and as this one only had an "A" remaining, he might as well fulfill his promise.

"Barton, are you there?" Steve calls into the comm and the agent answers over the line with a pained groan. "Meet us in Stark Tower. We're going to pick up Loki." Clint sounds a little more pleased with that.

It takes several minutes for all the members to assemble, but they meet on the officially wrecked floor where Loki is just climbing up from his personal-sized crater. The god is too busy gripping the edges of the steps in an attempt to get upright that he doesn't notice the Avengers gathering around behind him. He pauses and pivots back, eyes looking between every hero. Despite the arrow aimed at his face though, Loki grins. "If it's all the same to you," leaning back, he settles into a casual slump with his gaze ending locked onto Tony, "I'll have that drink now." He's still a bastard, but Tony can't help but smirk. "I believe I've earned it." No else gets the joke, naturally.

"We are returning to Asgard and you-" Thor begins before Loki cut him off with a hiss.

"Yes, where I will face whatever reprimands the Allfather sees fit to decree. No doubt something that serves to drive me into insanity in solitude. He does so love to use exile as punishment." Loki glares and pulls himself to standing without anyone's help. Not bad for a man that was slammed into concrete flooring by the Hulk and thrown through windows. "You will need a new device for the Tesseract to return to Asgard; one you do not have in your possession now. I have time for a drink in the meantime."

"Alright, boys, don't start comparing measurements." Tony steps between them lightly, looking to Thor. "He's right; it'll take a few days to put together a fancy new transporter. Might as well hang around until then." He jabs a finger in Thor's chest then and pulls a serious face. "Shwarma first."

"Tony," Cap is trying to be patient, "Loki is kind of priority."

"He's one unarmed god against the seven of us, Rogers. Wait here, keep the horny bastard here in one place. I'm getting out of this suit before it explodes." The chance of that was less than one percent as he'd used up all his munitions, but it was still in bad shape. "If my saving giant would follow me, I've got some clothes that'll fit your Banner-sized self." Tony gestures for the Hulk to follow Tony down the hall and the giant actually comes along.

He remains his larger self all the way to Tony's room, but size wasn't an issue when Tony had this whole tower built with himself and his suit in mind. There were so many reinforcements in every floor that it was nearing ridiculous. On the way to the closet, Tony strips out of his armor and cast the pieces wherever they happened to fall on the floor. Another Mark ruined, so did it matter? "What's your style, Doc?"

"I'd settle for anything with pants right about now." Comes Bruce's voice, actual Bruce and not Hulk. Just to make sure, Tony peeks out to find the doctor standing there with the pants still pulled up to at least obscure frontal nudity, but it's not doing much for the back. Not to mention that they could all use a shower to wash off the dirt and building dust from their skin.

"I think I can accommodate that. Spandex or leather?" Tony grins and Bruce releases a laugh-like breath. Pulling up and holding the stretched out pants with both hands, he walks into the closet as Tony goes back to leaf through his available wardrobe. "Here, try these." The inventor hands off a pair of black slacks with a black and dark gray striped shirt. "You're a big damn hero now, Dr. Banner. You could use some fancier threads."

Bruce just takes the clothes with one hand and smiles, moving towards the bathroom visible on the other side of the room.

"Change in here; it's okay." Tony says assuredly. "Not the first naked guy I've had in my bedroom." Bruce raises an eyebrow, asking a question without saying a word, but Tony shakes his head and holds up his hands in mock surrender. "Not a come on, Doc, just a fact. I respect your intelligence far too much to make you a conquest."

"That's... sweet." The doctor still looks skeptical though.

"Honestly. Do you know how often I meet anyone as brainy or brainier than I am? How rare that is? You're the same, I know it." The look on Bruce's face says it all; he knows exactly what Tony is talking about and visibly relax the more he thinks about it. "So don't even worry about it. Completely platonic, just a couple of awesome minds sharing in passionate science." How Tony managed to say that all with such a straight face, even Tony surprised himself with that and it got another small laugh out of Bruce.

"Let me get changed in private before I throw the other guy at you."

"A threat? Careful, Banner, we're getting into camaraderie here." Tony gives a grin before sidestepping all his armor bits and leaving Bruce to get dressed alone.

Ten minutes later, everyone is back in the same room and Loki is standing in the middle of the semi-circle of Avengers, the green-eyed god the only one to look at ease. His eyes don't leave Tony at all as soon as they're in view. It takes a lot of loud debating, but they finally settle on taking Loki with them to Shwarma since SHIELD still hasn't shown up just yet and Tony won't budge on the matter of a new restaurant to try. Loki stays silent through the whole thing, no doubt finding it far more entertaining to watch the chaos rather than risk getting injured again to further provoke anyone. Even Tricksters had to have a limit of how much bodily harm they were willing to endure for their precious mischief.

The walk to Shwarma is uncomfortably quiet with practically every single one of the Avengers sending Loki their best glares, surrounding the god in the center while Tony stares everywhere but their captive. And Loki? Loki still watches Tony, which was beginning to get more than a little annoying. There's a weight to Loki's attention that Tony has an inkling is probably more magic. He'd ask if he wasn't sure it would get suspicious looks from the rest of the band for showing an interest in Loki. He might have just saved the city/world, but that didn't make it any less important to lay low and avoid anything hinting to the still powerful desire for power.

Their meal passes likewise in silence that had turned a little easier once people had food in their stomachs and something else to focus on. The bill is put on Tony's dime, so Loki doesn't get anything. More accurately, Loki isn't offered anything. While everyone eats, Loki sits to the side, not allowed to join the table with everyone else. No one complains though and it's another length of time spent mutely with Clint watching Loki like a hawk, some pun intended.

On the upside, Shwarma is added to the list of places Tony will definitely come to for a meal again.

**xXx**

Stark Tower becomes their retreat and works well enough as a temporary base. Mostly, it's use was that it had enough showers for several people to clean up and change into something less battle-damaged while the others kept an eye on the god now sectioned off into a secure room. Tony volunteers for the last shower (mostly so he can take as long as he wants) and so ends up spending most of the afternoon in Loki's presence with one or more of the other Avengers. Much as possible, Tony opts to ignore the god in favor of others, offering Bruce free range of Tony's extensive closet and all the R&D floors, as well as any bedroom he wants. Hard-pressed to refuse, Bruce accepts and in less than two hours, Tony proudly declares Bruce to be a "science bro" and begins plotting project ideas with the scientist.

Eventually, Bruce leaves for his own turn through the shower and as Steve spends company time on the phone with Fury, Tony is forced to face the Trickster in the room. If he didn't know any better, the look Loki fixes him, Tony would have called it "if stares could fuck you", in which case Tony would already be pregnant. Then again, maybe he was wrong. For the life of him, he couldn't think why else Loki would be giving him such a look with an inviting quirk at the edge of his lips. Maybe he was bored with the magic-snuffing cuffs the other Asgardian provided. Maybe he was under the impression Tony was telepathic.

Steve gets into a loud conversation on the phone and Loki's eyes flicker to the captain for a split second before they return to Tony. "I have seen the end of the Chitauri." He says. "The Other and his master survive, but their army is depleted."

"And?" Tony leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.

"I promised, Stark. A trinket for the Chitauri's demise."

"You're still acting like everything's okay?" He leaned in, lowering his voice so that even distracted Steve was sure not to hear a thing. "You tried to kill me. The deal's off."

"The deal is off when I say. Do you want your prize or not?"

His jaw clenches. "I have no reason to trust you."

"Reason has nothing to do with anything. Life does not depend on reason. Survival must forfeit reason."

Viridian irises look back to the doorway as Thor and Clint arrive simultaneously. The distraction is a great relief, but as soon as Clint takes up watch duty, Thor claps a hand on Tony's shoulder and squeezes. "Tony Stark, I wish to speak with you."

"Busy, honey. We'll talk later." Tony's eyes migrate back to the chaos god.

Thor's grip tightens. "It is an urgent matter. It can't wait." The thunder god insists and Tony stands with a frown to follow the lead of Thor out into the next room. Before Tony can ask, Thor gets right to business. "My brother has attached himself to you. I fear the consequences this might have."

"What consequences? You are taking him back home for Daddy's wrist-slapping, aren't you?"

"It is the before that I have concern for. He's taken a strong interest in you and I do not know his motives. His gaze has hardly left you."

Crap. So If Thor noticed, then who else did? If Loki busted Tony's cover after all, there wouldn't be a god for Thor to take back to Asgard.

"Can't exactly tell you what's going on in your adoptive brother's head, Zeus. Don't put it past him to be pulling another act while he has the chance." Evade, evade, evade.

"That is my fear. We have a few days more on your planet and Loki fights to the last. He is not defeated yet."

"The scepter didn't work on me." Mostly because Loki didn't actually try it, but he wouldn't confess to that.

"He has no need of a scepter. His tongue is sharper than his blade and equally skilled at finding its target. Do not underestimate my brother."

Tony pauses, staring back into Thor's no nonsense gaze. "The way you talk about him, I'm surprised you still call him your brother. Thought he was adopted."

Something fractures in Thor's bearing and he shifts, looking away. "He is not blood, but he is still my brother. I have made the mistake of allowing that to cloud my judgment of his motives. Whatever has happened to him this past year, he has changed and not for the better." Clenching his jaw, Thor makes eye contact and touches a hand to Tony's shoulder again. "I only wish you to be cautious, Tony Stark. If my brother errs towards his true heritage, we should all fear."

"And his true heritage is?"

"A danger to all realms." Thor answers before promptly turning to leave again. Great. Nice talk, Thor buddy.

**xXx**

Tony decides to not go back to eye sex with Loki after the talk with Thor, instead hunting down Selvig to work up some ideas for a new dimensional teleporter. Anything to get Loki off this planet.

In a not entirely selfless gesture, Tony prompts Selvig to open up about his time under Loki's thrall. Under the guise of information that would help build the new device, of course. What Selvig confesses to remembering is more than Tony could have dreaded.

"It's easier to list what I don't remember." He says and Tony tenses. "But I didn't see everything either. I worked with the cube and avoided everyone else. Barton worked with the others more." Selvig pulls off another piece of the large machine that created the portal on top of the Tower. Plenty of this could be used for scrap in making the new piece. "It's strange," he pauses, "there are some things that are unclear. People that were in front of me, but I can't remember who they were. Faces are blurry, voices distorted, like I saw something I wasn't supposed to see and Loki took it away."

The tension bleeds from Tony instantly and he at least thanks Loki for that. Either losing Barton urged Loki to fix the leak or the god erased it from the memories that very night. Whatever the reason, Tony is grateful it's not a problem. "SHIELD won't be too happy with that. Blurred faces have all kinds of meaning. Or Loki could be screwing with us and making us chase our tails thinking something's important."

"He is the mischief god." Selvig huffs a mirthless laugh. "And Loki lives up to the tales."

He shouldn't take advantage; he really shouldn't, but... "So you're familiar with the myths?" Selvig nods. "Mind giving me the lowdown?"

An odd look crossed the astrophysicist's face, but he gives in and answers every question Tony poses about the gods, even passing on what little Thor had told them when he was in New Mexico. Some things had to be wrong in the myths, but others couldn't be known without asking one of the gods themselves. Loki was consistently touted as a trickster but not always a villain, Thor was the golden son of Odin, Loki was a deceitful sorcerer and a liar, Thor was brave and courageous and true. Favoritism came about with Aesir too, apparently.

An hour later, Bruce finds them and conversation reverts to planning the gods' return. Thanks to Bruce, by nightfall, they have a rough schematic drawn up for a fancy hand-held device that will zap Thor and Loki straight to the Rainbow bridge. Work starts immediately and any problem that crops up doesn't last long with two scientists and an engineer in the same room.

It's still well into the odd hours of late night and obscenely early morning before Tony collapses face first on his bed in exhaustion and drifts into a dreamless sleep fueled by alcohol and pain killers, only waking once Steve comes in the morning and gets him up. Another day is then spent in the lab in complete avoidance of their captive several floors away, but he uses the construction of the Tesseract device as an excuse. It takes all of Tony's self-control to not secret the Tesseract away, but eyes are constantly on the cube and Tony can't find the privacy to so much as get better scans on it.

With three geniuses working, they finish it by the second night and Tony starts to think that having lab partners isn't nearly as odious as he'd previously thought. Then comes the mental reminder that neither Selvig nor Bruce would be too happy if they found out Tony was working with Loki and he retains the mindset that partners are more trouble than they're worth.

**xXx**

Come morning, everyone is rounded up and Loki's manhandling is left to Thor as they pile into their respective vehicles and head out to Central Park. Tony begrudgingly gives over the cube and it's loaded into the cylindrical device. Loki is already masked, where the mask came from is a mystery that Tony doesn't need the answer for as long as the god isn't exposing their previous and temporary partnership.

What of his and Loki's deal? Technically, Tony took care of the Chitauri, the portal was opened, the army was destroyed, and he upheld his part of the bargain. So what of Loki's? Tony is surprised that extradition wasn't a factor in Loki's plan, but Thor was unexpected, so perhaps that was the catch. Either way, Loki is returning to Asgard now and he's leaving with the Tesseract.

The god gives one final glance to Tony and the engineer swears he sees the corners of Loki's eyes crinkle like he's grinning behind the mask, but before he can be sure, the handle of the device is turned and the pair are sucked up into another cosmic path.

"Can't say I'm going to miss them." Steve comments before reaching out to shake Tony's hand. "Mr. Stark." Ever since Tony almost died saving their asses, Steve has been downright pleasurable company.

"You're sure I can't get you to stay a little longer? Could use some muscle around here." Tony comments and Steve shakes his head with a laugh.

"Still outraged about your tower, Stark?" Clint says and Tony scoffs.

"My new tower is trashed because of that bastard. So yeah, still mad. Save the world and can't even get the earth's greatest supers to help fix it."

"But we'll wish you the best of luck." The archer smirks, walking back to the SHIELD-provided car as Widow is handing off what could be salvaged of his things from the helicarrier.

Tony dismisses Clint with a wave and goes back to climb into his automotive beauty as Bruce slides into the passenger side. "You ready, Banner?"

"Does it matter if I say 'no'?"

"Not really." Tony grins, shifting the car into gear and listening to it purr up to speed. "We have a bit of a record for accidents but far more successes in labs and workshops."

"We saw what explosions does to the other guy."

"Bruce, buddy, you are going to be too busy playing with all my toys to get angry. And I promise no more experiments on you without warning first."

A huff falls from Bruce and he shakes his head, a small smile tugging at his mouth. "Unless it's 'for science', right?"

"Anything can be 'for science' if you're good enough at bullshitting excuses on the fly. 'For innovation' is more my style."

"Yeah, well, just keep mellow jazz and bongo drums on standby if you try anything."

Tony laughs. "Noted."

* * *

**Endnote:** And we have the end of movie-centric scenes! For those wondering, yes, Thor 2 will be disregarded in this 'verse because I can't wait until November, and I haven't seen IM3 yet, so that will have to be disregarded as well despite how much I hate doing it.

To hear updates on chapter progress and maybe sneak peeks at some upcoming plot bunnies I have going on, check out my tumblr halcyonfrost dot tumblr dot com and spare me having to shamelessly promote myself.


	6. Chapter 6: Break

**AN:** To the guest I was unable to reply to directly: thank you so much for reviewing! And don't worry, the only thing I like more than Loki is Loki and Tony together, so they'll meet again. Soooon. ;3 Evil!Tony is one of my favorite AUs too and this chapter is his return from "morally ambiguous" to a little more of the evil!Tony I love. Next chapter, even more so.

**MINOR TRIGGER WARNINGS IN THE LAST FULL PARAGRAPH.** Descriptions of violence, torture, and brief mention of drug use. Strictly mental musings though, not actually depicted in the scene, but if those kinds of things bother you at all, I'd recommend just skipping it and reading the last three sentence sliver of text before the endnote.

Future updates are going to be slower; school started and it's going to be kicking my ass with everything (everyone) else demanding my time in this house. In the meantime, take a cryptic summary and an update! *throws things and runs*

_**Chapter Summary**__: Progress, revelations, and moves are made._

* * *

**Chapter 6: Break**

Over the years, the names attached to him were innumerable and the ways each one was said was even greater. There were certain tones he definitely preferred, hearing women - and maybe a few of the men he'd secreted back - moaning his name rated as some of his favorites, while others were higher on the list of "ways I never want to hear someone call me again." Pepper Potts had the most entries on the latter.

This was number five on said list.

"_You_-"

"Uh-uh." Tony tenses in his chair at the sound of Pepper's kitten heels on the cement floor behind him. "Haven't I made rules before about you being angry in my workshop?"

"What the hell is this?" She holds out her phone while Tony is busy backing away.

"Pep, I'm nursing wounds here!" Arms wrapped in strips white gauze at one wrist, across a bicep, and around one forearm are presented to make his case, but Pepper doesn't so much as glance at them. Even Bruce is attempting to put in some distance from the whole affair.

"I'll give you more wounds to nurse! I watched you fly through that portal, I hear second hand that you survived, and after two days, you can't have the decency to call me! Instead you send me _text_; no, actually, you make _JARVIS_ send me text saying that Loki is off world now and it's safe to come back to the tower."

"I did call you! I called you during the flight!"

"On your way through the portal! I was busy watching you risk your life, Tony!"

"Yeah, you were busy watching when I was trying to call you! Not all the blame can fall on me."

"Oh, I think it can. _Two days_, Tony. You couldn't call at any point then?"

"I was busy." He throws her words back at her and the glare he receives in return is actually rewarding. Pepper was never hesitant to show her emotions or her anger, so it was obvious when Tony's retorts hit where he intended them too.

"What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking about how long it was taking you to answer the damn phone."

"Tony-" Her voice is warning and Tony ignores the tone.

"I was trying to stop an alien invasion and keep our own intelligence agency from blowing up Manhattan, Pepper. After nearly dying, I spent whatever time I was conscious with Selvig and Bruce trying to get said remaining aliens _off_ our planet. Kind of had my hands full. What else do you want me to say?"

"Saying you're sorry for ignoring me these past couple days would be a good start."

There's a pregnant pause in which Tony has to consider some serious options here and react accordingly. He could try and save his relationship with Pepper for now or he could debate long term goals. "No." No saving the relationship then. "I'm not apologizing. I can't do this."

"What?" Red cheeks don't suit her, but this will make the long run much easier.

"We can play house all we want, but I won't stop being the idiot hand-delivering nuclear bombs through portals, flying around the world fighting crime in a suit armed to the teeth with explosives, and that doesn't fit into the mold you have of settling down and starting a family. I never will fit that."

"What, you're breaking up with me now?"

"Better late than never. Sorry, Pep."

"You'll apologize for that but not for almost dying."

"I've almost died plenty of times. I haven't yet."

She glares for a moment longer. "Are you going to fire me now too?"

"Of course not. You're too good a CEO." When the time came to it, getting back the title was easy, but it was easier to let Pepper handle all the business for now. "Did you want to quit?"

"I've put too much into this company to quit." She says sternly, taking offense at the assumption.

"Good. Then we'll just stop the sex part. Back to how it was before." Not that before was so much better. At least now he would stop having lingering questions about a relationship with Pepper though. It also didn't help that every time sex came to Tony's mind, a pair of vivid green eyes and leather armor were the images that cropped up instead of Pepper's delicate curves. Confessing that would be the kind of mistake even Tony doesn't have the balls for.

Pepper pulls herself up into forced professionalism and nods tightly. "If that'll be all, Mr. Stark, I'll take my leave." This conversation obviously wasn't over, but he could tell Pepper needed more time to gather up more ammunition to spit back at him.

"That'll be all, Miss Potts." Tony returns to the gauntlet he's working on and stays that way until the footsteps recede out the door.

"You have a thing for taunting tigers, don't you?" Bruce questions and Tony smiles to himself.

"I don't like waiting around for the inevitable. If I can get it over with now, then I'm going to."

"People will start accusing you of suicidal tendencies."

"Uh, that's 'self-destructive tendencies', thank you very much, and too late. To be fair though, I was actually dying at the time."

A glance up silently questions more and Tony rolls one shoulder nonchalantly. "Long story. Old core," he taps the reactor, "Palladium source was poisoning me. Fixed it."

"You put Palladium in your personal arc reactor? You did realize palladium is fatal, right?" Only Bruce could say that and not make it sound like an insult. If he did mean it as one, Tony didn't see it that way.

"I put what I had to in there from the materials an Afghani terrorist group provided in my cave. Anyway, it's done and I got a new one that's not killing me. No use dwelling." Flexing his hand in the gauntlet, the reaction time is tested as JARVIS runs a scan on it and lists the results on the holographic screen in front of Tony's face. It's perfect, but it's not comforting Tony the way it should. He needed a lot more suits and he needed to not have to control them all one at a time. Better an army than one man in a single suit. One gets messed up, another will already be there and ready for flight.

"How would you feel about being drafted into some suit construction, Doc?" Tony glances to Bruce.

**xXx**

Pepper tries to return and finish their argument two more times. On the third try, Tony revokes her access to Stark Tower, but that doesn't prevent another five attempts where, in spite of being locked out, she instead relays her anger through JARVIS and demands the AI repeat everything word for word. Tony uses the volume control more those days than he ever has in the entire time since JARVIS was initiated. Even if he had the time, he wouldn't feel guilty about ending things the way he did.

When he isn't being coerced out into the light to help clean up the destruction Loki left in New York, Tony focuses heavily on making more suits. A distraction was necessary for sanity reasons; too many things were battling for control over his emotions. Work on the suits - yes, a massive emphasis on the plural - turns into a full time job for Tony, who starts spending days on end in the labs, falling asleep wherever his head drops, and leaving him little motivation to even step outside the Tower. Bruce can only help so much when his field of science was so very different. When the good doctor is no longer able to be of use, Tony takes up all the pressure and Bruce returns to his own experiments.

A few days turn into a couple of weeks.

Weeks pile up with absolutely no word from Asgard, Loki, or anything pertaining to the mischief god's fate.

On the occasions that Tony allows it, the silence and lack of any news worries him. Worrying only makes him work three times as hard on his suits that are coming along far too slowly for his taste. Bruce is showing up more often - or maybe time is just moving faster - to make Tony eat something or bring him coffee; the latter of which Tony always greets with enthusiasm and a peck on the cheek that one time that was followed by a forced promise to never do that again. Usually Tony gets right back to work, but every once in a while, he stops to savor the caffeine and Bruce manages to get a conversation in before Tony's ever-growing fatalistic mindset kicks back in and he buries himself in parts and ammunitions and creating more miniature arc reactors. Tony isn't really sure how often the doctor passes by, whether on a once-daily basis or more frequently, but considering his clothes are different each time, it's not that often, apparently.

"You know, I actually had my concerns about the possibility of technophilia more than a few times." Bruce confides before Tony snorts into his mug and glances up at the doctor. At least Bruce had taken Tony's advice about fashion, sporting one of Tony's ivory button up shirts and a pair of dark gray trousers. Not the height of style, but he was probably going back to the lab soon himself, so it was spiffy considering.

"I'm past that phase." Tony quips dryly, groaning a little at the bitter coffee taste now sitting in the back of his nose. "What engineer hasn't looked at one of their creations before and wondered how difficult it would be to attach a vibrator and code a quick program for it?"

"Can't say I have." The scientist takes a calm sip from his glass mug, a weak tea from the looks of it.

"Then you need to have some fun, sweetie."

"Bad for my blood pressure. Heart rate goes up, I go out."

Tony tilts his head and tucks his chin in to give Bruce an "are you serious right now?" look. "Have you burst out once in the past month you've been here?"

"Three months," the other corrects.

"Even better. Three months and not a thing. Not for my care to keep you safe either; there have been some very interesting run-ins with a suit or two."

"Yeah, Mark VIII didn't seem fond of me coming in your room when you were sleeping, I noticed." Another smile, not of genuine amusement but of a well-practiced fake humor, pulls at Bruce's face with the memory. That was the first since the Battle of New York that the other guy almost made an appearance. It took dismantling Mark VIII just to get the brown to return to Bruce's eyes.

On the upside, the suit's protocol for protecting Tony while he slept worked marvelously.

"_So_, give yourself the credit you damn well deserve. Good gods, Bruce, the other guy obeys you. Would I be alive if the other guy hadn't plucked me up?" Even though Tony was unconscious at the time, he heard the recollections of it after the fact. "That doesn't seem like a thing he would usually do, would it? That was you controlling him, not the other way around."

He switched the mug out for a screwdriver and pointed it at Bruce. "I stand by what I said before. You need to strut a bit more. After New York, you became a big fucking hero. Kids are painting themselves green and wearing costume fists and growling, wanting to be like you. You are a role model and kids could have worse to choose from than a prodigal scientist that saved a few cities and brought down too many bad guys to count."

"If I say I believe you, are you going to stop trying to give me a pep talk?" Exasperation painted Bruce's expression, but there was amusement in the quirk of his smile and in his eyes.

"We'll see, won't we?"

"I'm going back to my lab." Tony's lab, actually, but one of the work spaces had been refitted for Bruce's work and had come to be known as his by association and sheer time spent within its walls. Fond as he was of Bruce, Tony needed his own space to work. It was nearly shameful how quickly he'd jumped on the idea of having the Tesseract and Loki on his side and just as quickly, it was ripped away. Now all those plans were scrapped and he had to come up with a new one on top of avoiding SHIELD and not letting Bruce find out. Pressure? What pressure?

"Good night, Tony." Bruce turns away.

"Is it night?" Genuine confusion came over him and he glances beyond the machines blocking the windows to see the moon staring back between the skylines. "Huh. Look at that. Night, Doc."

One more wordless wave and Bruce leaves, closing the door to leave Tony to his devices once again. "JARVIS, keep reading to me."

_"We've reached the end of all references to 'Loki' and 'Lopt' or 'Loptr' in the Poetic Edda, sir. The next mention of an assumed pseudonym begins in Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda."_

"Alright, then read me my bedtime story."

_"In chapter twenty, Loki is referred to as a calumniator and son of a Jotunn."_

"More of a gist than a story, but okay." The words catch up to him. "Wait, 'Jotunn', you said? The frost giants?"

_"His father is called a frost giant, but his mother's race is left unsaid or lost in the translation."_ JARVIS replies. _"It is possible Loki is only half Jotunn, accounting for his smaller frame and ability to appear as Asgardian. Thor has suggested that Loki was taken in by Odin when Loki was a child. As part of a hated race, there is the strong probability that Loki was not made aware of this fact until a much later date."_

"Raised by liars, learn from the best."

_"One might say the same about you, sir."_

Alright, sass was one thing, but comparing Tony to a homicidal being from another realm? Not as okay. "Why the sudden venom, J?"

_"Merely voicing an opinion. Public view and stories don't always tell the full tale. Magic, whether pure or evil in intention, has been considered deceitful and a sin in the past. I theorize that Loki has simply put himself into the role that was always cast onto him."_

"Self-fulfilling prophecy."

_"To term it succinctly."_

"Huh." He brings the cup back to his lips for another sip of coffee, silent as the words hang in the air and settle themselves where they would in Tony's mind. "Any activity at any of the Bifrost sites?"

_"Thor appeared once and by himself but left within a few hours. No energy signatures matching Loki's have been registered across the globe up to now."_

"'A few weeks', my ass. He is a good liar." Tony sighs and returns to the boot. "Keep an eye out, will you? Let me know as soon as anything happens."

_"Of course."_

It had only been the past few days - or maybe it was longer after all? - that Tony's curiosity got the better of him and he set JARVIS on researching every reliable resource that mentioned Loki. If the god did return, it couldn't hurt to be prepared for the worst and there was a staggeringly high probability that on the chance Loki came back, he would have some vengeance to reap on Tony for sending Loki off with Thor. If Loki had wanted it so, Tony would be dead. Loki showed he had no qualms about murder whenever he wanted and whomever he wanted.

Except for Coulson.

Coulson somehow survived and Tony still hadn't figured that out, just gleaned the secret from the bugs he still had in SHIELD's systems. Troublesome as it was, being able to hack SHIELD rates as one of Tony's proudest accomplishments and he has Loki to thank for it. The bastard. Hopefully he would never have to admit that aloud. Hopefully he couldn't have a homicidal god showing up to kill him either. That would be nice. In all honesty, it would be Tony's preference to have Loki's strength on Tony's side.

A yawn surfaces unbidden and Tony covers it with the back of one hand. "JARVIS, how long have I been awake?"

"Twenty-eight hours. Though you only rested for four hours before nightmares disturbed your sleep. I would say it's been much longer than that since you've slept the whole night."

"Since my last pain pill-induced knockout?"

"Not the healthiest route, but it was the first and last time in weeks that you've slept a full eight hours."

Taking the same road would be a lot easier now; Tony's been running on coffee, energy drinks, and adrenaline for a while, but five seconds after his eyes focus on the orange bottle of pills, Loki comes back to mind. Loki's been doing that a lot lately. And as soon as he makes an appearance in Tony's thoughts, so does SHIELD. It's only matter of time before Fury and his bunch catch up too and Tony needs an army to keep them all at bay. Working through the SHIELD files exposed a lot more than he'd been expecting and the agency wouldn't be easy to take down even with an army of suits.

Sleep can wait. Priorities first.

**xXx**

After the impersonal names of Marks I-VIII, these self-sustaining suits call for something with a little more style. Before each suit is finished, Tony gives each of them a name all to their own that's suitably fitting to their design. It's with great pride that Tony can stand back and claim them nearly done, save for a few minor additions here and there to make them work. It's taken him long enough, but every suit has two dozen different protocols and safeties built in to be activated with a corresponding code phrase that only he knows. There's no such thing as being too cautious right now, and he wants to make sure these suits can be used by him and only him. Even Rhodey is on a no fly list for these beauties.

It takes a single call from his least favorite person on the planet to deserve his revelry. Nick Fury has the super power of bad timing and annoying the hell out of Tony.

_"Stark, we need your consultation for a project on base."_

"Why me? I'm busy. Come back during consultation hours."

_"It is Thursday, Stark."_ Fury sounds to have about as much patience for Tony as Tony has for Fury. _"Stubbornness is your only excuse and not a viable one. Get your ass down here. There's a car waiting for you on the curb with a pair of agents that will be glad to retrieve you from inside your tower if you're not down in fifteen minutes."_

"Sounds delightful."

_"It's not a choice, Stark. Outside. Fifteen minutes."_

The line goes dead and Tony sighs. "J, connect me to Bruce's lab."

There's a few seconds of pause before Bruce's voice comes over the intercom. _"Something wrong, Tony?"_

"SHIELD call. I don't trust them enough to go alone. Want to hitch a ride with me?"

_"Fury is still talking to you after you hacked into their files back on the carrier?"_ And they don't even know a third of what other things he did to their files. _"He must be pretty desperate to call for your help on something."_

"Yeah, it's suspicious as hell and Fury's slicker than most. So will you come? He's got a car waiting outside."

_"I'll meet you in the lobby in..."_ There's a small clatter of metal and glass paired with the shuffling of papers. _"Seven minutes."_

"Got it. Meet you there." Tony disconnects this time and steps out his lab for the first time in days. He's only in a white singlet and jeans with more than a few singe marks on them, but it's a SHIELD base he's going to and he's not going to waste time changing clothes for them, so Tony pulls on a jacket and heads for the lobby to wait for Bruce.

**xXx**

"What do you need me for again?" Tony says after twenty minutes of following Fury down winding hallways and through hangar-sized rooms that didn't house any aircrafts because they were too damn far underground.

"Testing. And another debrief about the New York and Loki incident fifteen weeks ago."

"Once wasn't enough? How many times are we going to have to live through it again for your satisfaction?"

"As many times as it takes."

He makes no attempt to hide his contemptuous scoff. Tony glances around as he walks, taking in his surroundings. Fancy bunker, honest to God. Some of the amenities seemed a bit redundant though. Too much bulk, too little style, and what was with the -

He stops in his tracks.

Oh, _stupid_. Of all times, he had to let his guard down now. Accept it gracefully, Tony.

"I don't usually hand out compliments, but this was brilliant, Director. Good show." Fury turns back to Tony and the genius is smiling. "Lead walls, communication blackout, can't call my suit, suit can't find me. 'Zug zwang' is the term, isn't it?"

"It is." Fury answers and steps closer with a palm on his holster. "The question is how you accept the situation."

"Tony?" Tony wishes he could answer Bruce's questioning call, but he can't. No, actually, he can, but he _won't._

"With utmost grace." He answers Fury's question and holds out his wrists for the cuffs he knows are coming. "You've got me cornered. Can't do much else." And Tony honestly wasn't suicidal; he just needed time to figure a way out of this. The best way was cooperation for now. The more he struggled, the more they would use to ensure his restraint. He'd broken out of captivity before, and he would break out again.

With a nod from Fury, another agent steps up and pulls Tony's wrists behind him, cinching the unforgiving steel rings around his wrists with a couple of telltale clicks.

"What's going on?" Bruce has raised his voice and tries to stop them, but Tony shakes his head.

"Leave it, Bruce. Just take care of JARVIS for me. He gets lonely."

A hand shoves him forward between the shoulder blades and Tony walks without a fight. He loses sight of Fury afterwards and is escorted down the corridor by a pair of armed agents. Bruce's voice carries much farther, but even that fades with enough distance.

It's must be ridiculously far underground now and Tony is starting to lose track of the number of turns, effectively ruining Plan A less than fifteen minutes after Tony concocted it. Clint appears on his way out of a door on the hallway and Tony's entourage stops as a hard glare morphs Clint's face.

"Fancy seeing you here, Hawk." Tony's had plenty of practice keeping his voice light regardless of circumstances. "I take it you regained your memories?"

"Enough. We had to pull Selvig in just to make sure."

"Sounds like a fun club."

"Really not." Clint says. "It took getting through a lot I'd rather forget."

"We all have those, sweetie."

"You betrayed us."

Tony scrunches up his face and his cuffs rattle when he tries unconsciously to move them. "_Technically_, I wasn't allied with you or SHIELD until _after_ the helicarrier explosion. Even then, I only put myself with you for numbers and convenience during the Chitauri invasion. _Technically_, we both betrayed Loki. You were his most useful pet, weren't you?"

The other agents either can't or don't bother to stop Clint as the archer grabs Tony by the throat and shoves his back against the wall, crushing his restrained arms between his body and the cold metal. "I had no choice. You did. And you chose the homicidal demigod that had already killed dozens of agents before he drafted you. And what for?" He tightens his hold until Tony can't even cough up air.

"Can't. Say. When. You're. Choking."

Trying to make his point anyway only serves to make Clint squeeze to the point that Tony feels his eyes rolling back. Just as his consciousness ebbs, the hand lets go and with no muscle strength, Tony collapses to his knees and slumps to one side against the wall, gasping in breaths whenever he wasn't making his throat seize in pain with an unattractive coughing fit.

"Thor stopped by."

_Tell me something I don't know, Merida._

"Loki escaped Asgard." Clint says and Tony gathers himself enough to glance up for a few seconds before coughing into the floor again. Loki escaping is equal parts unsurprising and unexpected. Was it possible to be both at once? "If he has the balls to come back, he'll come for you. And we'll get him on the way." Tony's mind is raging at both ends of the spectrum, buoying back and forth between cursing the god's potential return to murder Tony for his betrayal and hoping that the god could be his saving grace right now. Loki did swear that he still had their deal in mind. What Tony had to keep reminding himself of was that Loki was a liar. No depending on unreliable sources anymore.

"Good luck with that." His voice is rougher than he wanted. "I fell from his good graces too, or have you forgotten?"

"I saw him the afternoon after the battle. When you were keeping watch and Cap had his back turned, Loki's eyes were on you. They were on you all the way out the door. You sold him out; he'll come back just to kill you."

"You going to let him?" The lack of answer answers Tony's question for him and a grin parts his lips in a full smile just as the guards pull him back to his feet. "If you get him before I do, give him a boot to the ass for me, will you, babe?" He's shoved forward again and Clint stays put. Violent? Yes, but at least Clint gave Tony more to work with than these SWAT-geared agents that might as well have had their lips sewn shut. Tony tries to get a rise out of them; he really does, and he works hard at it too, but neither one budges in the slightest.

An agonizingly quiet perp walk later, they push him into a room furnished in nothing but a meager, thin mattress slapped on a sagging wire frame, set across the small space from what frighteningly is assumed to be a toilet but was really nothing more than a metal bowl against the wall. Prison cells were better than this. The walls were grey cinder block and the door was two-inch thick steel with a clear plexiglass panel at eye level. No books, no electrical switches or outlets, nothing but a toilet and a cot.

"Come on, boys, really? I don't even get a magazine? I have needs."

Tony is forced to his knees and then face first into the concrete floor, legs pinned out straight behind him with one guard's knee in the small of Tony's back while they uncuffed him. Still not a word and as soon as they were done, they got up and left while Tony slides his forearms up to support his weight as he rolls over to his back to stare skywards. Rather, where the sky should be.

On the left hand side of the ceiling on the wall opposite the door, there's a two inch crack that occupies Tony's interest for a whole five seconds of scrutiny. Lack of structural integrity? A false crack to hide something? No, no, wait. Scratch that, it was a bad paint job. Less interesting. And yet, it's the most stimulating sight in the room because just thinking about that toilet five feet up to the right and two feet back from his head is making him grimace. Even the desert had a real toilet. The difference was that the Ten Rings wanted information from Tony and were attempting to play nice in getting it. SHIELD didn't give a shit. Tony was a traitor and a prisoner and therefore should be treated like one.

The fear wasn't this room. The fear didn't come at the thought of a Norse god tracking him down and killing him; Loki would be quick about it and Tony would barely register the glint of a blade before it was buried in his throat. The far greater horror was that SHIELD needed absolutely nothing from Tony. No reason to keep him alive, no intelligence to gather from him, nothing. They could make him into a human pin cushion, carve out bits of his skin, and beat him until no inch of skin was left that hadn't been marred by cuts or covered in blood dripping from another wound. They could run electric currents through him until his muscles seized and cramped. Drugs could be pumped through his veins that would make him writhe in agony and scream until his voices was hoarse and he passed out. None of that was the worst part though.

The worst is that no one can save him from this fate now or after the torture starts. _That_ was the real nightmare that would plague him. Up until the day it stops being a vision in his head and becomes his life.

* * *

**Endnote: **Can you tell I actually haven't _seen_ IM3 yet? I'm just going by secondhand accounts and twisting them to my liking now. Tony's state of mind is different during NY than canon Tony, so he's reacting differently. IT'S AN AU, DAMN IT. I DO WHAT I WANT.

OH, LOOK. A TUMBLR APPEARS. ww w. halcyonfrost . tumblr . com


	7. Chapter 7: Seven Devils

**AN:** Trigger warnings for this entire chapter in a big way. **TRIGGERS INCLUDE:** blood; graphic depictions of violence, a range of tortures, and abuse; non-consensual drug use; and mind-fuckery. For anyone that can't deal with any of these triggers, there will be a small summary in the endnote.

**_Chapter Summary: _**_"Oh, Nick," Tony's vocal chords feel like they've been run through a coffee grinder, "yours is not the face I was hoping to see when I died."_

* * *

**Chapter 7: Seven Devils**

"Not that having a god obsessed with me isn't a major ego boost, but I'd prefer a stable stalker versus a wannabe ruler."

Loki tilts his head with a smirk turning the edge of his thin lips up at one corner. "If I were 'stable', I would not have risked life and limb rescuing you."

It's reminiscent of déjà vu standing here, Tony with a drink in his hand and Loki across from him. This time though, Tony is a lot more trusting, passing beside the god and turning his back to Loki as Tony pulls up a schematic of the SHIELD helicarrier to start marking weak spots in defenses. "Just admit it that you missed me and we can get back to work on finishing off SHIELD."

"I had plans for you, Stark. _Glorious_ plans that no prison cell has the right to ruin." Loki's footsteps sound behind Tony, but the inventor stays with his face forward. "All I could think of during my imprisonment on Asgard was how delightful you looked in red." The god appears in Tony's peripheral and a hand touches his shoulder, turning the inventor to face Loki. Leaning in, his lips brush Tony's ear, breath warming his ear and Tony unconsciously relaxes into the touch.

Tony grunted nearly soundlessly at the click of a knife slicing through the space between ribs and nicking against his bones. As his right lung fills with blood, it bubbles up into his mouth and drips from his lips when he coughs against his will. There's no confused call of Loki's name, there's no surprise here, Tony was almost expecting this, but regardless, the pain that paralyzed his chest is such agony, he can't say a single word.

"The dream does not live up to the reality. You truly are more beautiful this way." Loki says with admiration and the blade slides from Tony's chest with all the ease of sharp metal through warm butter. Loki's supporting arm releases him and Tony falls to the floor in an uncoordinated heap, finally letting out an involuntary sob of pain. He could feel himself draining; the spreading warmth of blood staining the back of his shirt while cold began in the rest of his body. The blood pools underneath him and his hands slip trying to push himself up to no avail. By this point, he should have been unconscious from sheer amount of plasma loss, but no such mercy has fallen on him yet.

Loki hauls Tony up his throat, a mirror of the last time they were here, and Tony's hands scrabble at Loki's arms. "Don't-" he manages before the hold on his throat tightens to cut off Tony's air supply. Loki's head tilts with an unnaturally sharp twitch more reminiscent of a flicker than an actual movement. Instead of green eyes and the manic grin of a god, the unearthly Chitauri visage stares back for a split second before it slips back to Loki's features.

"You will all fall before me." He growls and pitches Tony through the window again.

This time though, this time, he doesn't have the bracelets. Tony tumbles through the air, unable to right himself, no saving grace, only the ground rushing to meet him. As he nears the blessed kiss of concrete, the ground opens into a portal that swallows Tony and pulls him into the void, into the space of all consuming nothingness where he couldn't even hear his own screams in the silence.

Light exploded before his eyes and he took a gasping breath, pulling at the thick leather bindings on his arms and body unconsciously. Sounds broke through, a heart monitor and voices he could barely understand while images coalesced into the clarity of harsh florescent lighting and faces.

"Oh, Nick," Tony's vocal chords feel like they've been run through a coffee grinder, "yours is not the face I was hoping to see when I died."

"You're not dead, Stark." There was a heavily implied "not anymore" and Fury sounds intensely irritated about fact too.

"Was for a couple minutes though, am I right? How did harvesting the reactor work for you?" Tony looks down to the metal circle and grins as he lays his head back against the flat metal table. It's intensely uncomfortable but no more so than his injuries. "Like the little trick I programmed in?"

"Yes, we found the incendiary trip wire."

Tony laughs even though it's agonizingly painful to. "Learned my lesson after Obie. Won't power anything but me. If you'd left it out for another five minutes, you would have an even bigger problem. Looks like I'm no use to you dead or alive, huh? What a damn shame."

"As long as Loki knows we have you, it doesn't matter. He'll come looking for you eventually."

The bark of laughter doesn't even sound like it came from him and if it hadn't reverberated through his bruised chest so deeply, he would assumed it was someone else's. "It's been what? Two weeks? More than that by now? Months since he and Thor left for Asgard? Why would he come for me? He's got the cube, and he's free of his overlords' grips. Loki can do whatever the fuck he wants now, Nick. And I assure you that coming back for one of the many of the mortals he used as a means to an end is not on his list."

"That remains to be seen, Mr. Stark." Fury's gaze goes to the others in the room - medical staff from the looks of them - and nods his head towards Tony. "Fix him up. Put him back into his cell. He's even less use unconscious than he is dead."

Tony's head thumps back again as the SHIELD medical staff busy themselves taking off the pads from his chest, other nurses rolling away the electric paddles. No wonder his arc reactor was tingling more than normal. The prick of a needle brought his head up and he glared at the careless nurse that jabbed him in the elbow. "Got any bigger gauges on that needle? I don't think I felt that one enough."

The nurse looks up only to pull at his eyelids and shine a light in each pupil. "And now the blinding. Thanks for that." Everything feels heavy, but the last few seconds, it just grew worse. He can't keep his eyes open and only registers that he must have been given another sedative before unconsciousness grips and pulls him back into its depths.

**xXx**

**_Nine days earlier_**

There weren't many options for captivity. It's shocking how many times Tony has found himself in these scenarios, but he responds the same every time. _Use your damn brain, Tony. Think your way out._ Build _your way out and if you die in the process, you went out with your boots on and guns blazing. Not everyone gets that chance._

Dying sure as hell wasn't option A though. Tony is getting the hell out of here in one piece. He just has to _think._

Two days was all the patience SHIELD gave him. For two days, a few hours every day, they dragged him into an overly bright room, cuffed his hands to the table, and went through a rather lazy interrogation process of the same questions in varying paraphrases of the same lines. Where was Loki, did he know that Loki was going to escape, did he aid Loki in his escape, was he aware of where the portal was going to open, was he a part of the plot to sabotage the helicarrier, on and on and on until Tony almost wished Loki would show up and kill him. Three times a day, he was given a tray of typical prison food, and Tony ate as little as he could. It was dull and fruitless and Tony only answered the few questions that he did out of sheer boredom. Unfortunately for SHIELD, he answered the questions they didn't care about and he gave the most casual and scathingly dismissive reply he could manage.

At the end of day two, they start strapping him to a metal table that was inclined to a seventy-five degree angle. The leather binds are heavy and unforgiving at each wrist, ankle, and one across the curve of his ribs. Interrogation continues with questions now being shouted at him in a new room that echoed far too much to be comfortable. Tony still doesn't answer, and they set up an IV in one of his arms to be able to bypass having to untie him for meals.

Day three, after not much sleep from still being tied up, the door opens and Tony is ready for another agent to come in and start yelling or threatening him. "Tell you what, bring me a nice bottle of single malt and I might-"

Tony stops talking at sight of the short form in the doorway. "Hey, Tony."

"Doctor. Keeping your anger in check?" Tony fakes casual and is rewarded with a smile from Bruce even though its forced.

"For the moment." Bruce isn't making any attempts to hide his emotions; questions are written in the lines between his eyes and just haven't made their way to his tongue yet. So Fury filled him in then. Not a big surprise. Tony didn't resist going into custody, which could either be the mark of a very guilty man or a confidently innocent one. Since he hadn't confessed to anything but missing number thirteen with Maxim's cover models, no one could pin either guilt or innocence on him.

Good old Bruce wanted to ask questions again from the person he could trust. It was all over his face and it was obvious he wanted to know. And okay, maybe Tony actually wanted to tell him a little.

"Go ahead, Doc. They're waiting, ask away."

"Did you strike a deal with Loki?" He goes straight for the gold, but Tony can see the underlying question: _"did you know he was goading the other guy?"_

For anyone else, Tony would have stayed silent. But this was Bruce. "He showed up a few days after the attack on the SHIELD base, the night before Germany. Loki offered me the Tesseract." He confesses finally and knows Fury is standing behind some one-way glass somewhere cheering. "In exchange, he needed helping getting rid of the Chitauri and putting eyes on the helicarrier. I was supposed to... monitor the search and make sure it didn't get too close." Bruce's jaw sets and he turns away. "But I swear to God I had no idea you were one of his targets." Tony amends, pulling against his restraints. "All he told me was where to go in Stuttgart. The explosion, Stark Tower, I didn't know about them at all. He threw me out a damn window, Bruce."

"Yeah, and I fell fourteen thousand feet through the air without a suit to catch me. We all fell, Tony."

"Loki is not my ally." Tony assures. "I don't know where he is. All I wanted before was the cube, and he's pulled a vanishing act with that now. I don't know where he is."

The scientist stares for a moment, trying to read Tony's face and only finding genuine concern and guilt at what Loki did to the doctor, not guilt for SHIELD, just for Bruce. "I believe you." Tony relaxes only fractionally. Bruce recognizes Tony's innocence in inducing the Hulk, but that doesn't change anything about his imprisonment. "JARVIS is throwing a silent tantrum without you, by the way. Barely lets me into anything."

"Give him the alpha five code and throw him some compliments. He likes that." If the code also happen to bury all of Tony's private files under so many levels of coding that it would take all the best decryption agents years to process, Tony wasn't going to mention that part. JARVIS was built to be smart about it; he would know what to do. "I'd do more, but I'm a bit tied up at the moment. Try me again on Thursday." Tony waves one hand as dismissively as he can with the inch or so of room he has to shift.

Bruce smiles for a moment, genuine, but then the door opens and Fury steps in silently, eyes locked on Tony. "Sorry, Tony." Bruce sighs.

"We all have to live with our choices, Doc. Thanks for coming."

"I was convinced into coming."

"I figured as much." The way Fury's jaw clenches at Bruce ratting him out though is enough to get Tony smiling again.

"Doctor Banner." Fury says and Bruce gives a silent nod of farewell to Tony before turning and leaving. The door clangs shut heavily and Tony lays his head back with a heavy exhale. Got things settled with Bruce and yet he didn't feel any better. He wouldn't put it past SHIELD to slip some artificially calming drugs alongside the parenteral nutrition, and that wasn't helping his state of mind. Neither was the thought of spending what would probably be the last few weeks of his life strapped down in a SHIELD cell.

Tony finishes humming three albums of AC/DC before the door opens again and he laughs at the face that greets him. "Ah, the balm. Come to gently coax more information out of me, Agent Romanoff?" Tony leans his head back, trying to get comfortable in his binds to no avail.

"For claiming not to have spent much time with him, you picked up quite a few things from Loki." Natasha comments. "Director Fury wants Loki captured."

"And I can't help. Not that I don't want to help; believe me, one less Norse god on the loose is better for all, but I have nothing to give you."

"You don't have many chances to redeem yourself, Stark."

"I've told you all I've got. Time to let me out."

Even the great actress doesn't hide her incredulous smirk. "And why should we?"

"Because I'm getting out one way or another. Alive on my own two feet or in a body bag, though I prefer the former. It's either let me out now or wait until I escape, and let me tell you, if I have to get out of here on my own? I'm gonna be _pissed_." Tony meets her eyes and they stare silently at one another for long moments.

"Loyalty to the wrong side is dangerous, Stark. I know."

"And I don't have the patience for your Russian 'days of yore' stories. I'm not that bored." What could she tell him that he couldn't pull from the files he snatched off the helicarrier?

Her jaw clenches and she crosses her arms. "They'll sooner kill you than let you go."

"They can try; they won't succeed."

"You're not immortal, Stark." She says and Tony laughs again.

"No, I'm just really lucky. I had a god on my side for a little while, sweetheart. Not many people can boast that."

"When the god is a murderer, you shouldn't be boasting either."

"I'm sorry, what do you do for a living again?" He returns. "When I see you building toys for little children, you can start harping on others about killing. Until then, lay off the hypocrite act."

Widow sighs and blinks slowly, looking to the side, a deliberate action if he ever saw one. Almost every expression she had since she walked in the door was an act and Tony wouldn't think otherwise. "Fury's patience is running out."

"So is mine."

"You're the one tied up in an underground cell."

"You're the one mistaking that as inescapable prison."

She frowns. "This isn't a cave in Afghanistan. You can't build a suit from scraps and blast your way out of here."

"It would be a cliché to use the same escape plan twice anyway." Tony shrugs.

"They're going to get information out of you one way or another."

"And torture is notoriously unreliable. Make a man desperate enough and he'll tell you anything, including a lie. Torture someone enough and a twenty-year-old college boy will swear he's an eighty-six year-old widow with four kids and a date with the nice veteran down the hall from her in the retirement home. Information doesn't mean it's the truth."

Silence follows that should be uncomfortable, but Tony knows it's Widow's unhappiness at his point. She should know better than anyone that not all interrogations lead to fruitful results. "You're walking a dangerous line, Stark."

"I like the solitude that comes with being an asshole. Admired from afar, that's my favorite."

Her phone beeped on her hip and she glanced at the screen before returning the device to her pocket. "Everything that comes now is a result of your own actions." She says on her way to the door.

"Looking forward to it."

**xXx**

After Bruce sees him intact and SHIELD can claim Tony unharmed by a witness, things get much worse. Natasha's interrogation techniques failed, within hours, a trio of agents come in. Tony writes them off at first, but then Fury makes his appearance and the door slams shut.

"Tired of unidirectional glass, Director? Come to beat me up yourself?"

"So you can boast that you made me mad? I'll pass. I'm overseeing today. You've already seen my assistants." Fury gestures to the other nameless agents magnanimously.

Just because he's bored as hell, he names all three men in his mind. The one that's a couple inches taller than Fury, sporting a blond buzzcut, and stares with glassy brown eyes, Tony calls Edgar; mostly because, despite the suit, the freckles make him look like a country boy. The brunette with the stocky build and a height that made even Tony feel tall is called Steve. Short Steve and Captain America Steve both have that same look on their face like they think Tony is below them. Tony feels that both Short Steve and Captain Steve need the sticks pulled out of their respective asses. The second brunette was in between Fury and Tony's height but even less distinctive than his coworkers, so he was given the stunningly unique name of "Bob" and passed over.

"If you wouldn't mind," Fury says to the men and both Edgar and Bob release Tony from the uncomfortable rack and drag him closer to Fury, holding him securely by his biceps while Short Steve looks on. Director Fury looks at Short Steve and nods towards Tony. Short Steve steps up, and with an unwavering expression, balls up his fist, and punches Tony across the jaw. Tony's head follows the force of the blow and a groan falls from his lips as the coppery taste comes from his cheek. The two holding him keep their grip. He pointedly ignores the pain in his neck as he looks back to the SHIELD agents.

"Tell us about Loki." Fury demands.

"Tall and dark with a wicked grin and some serious psychological baggage. Likes projecting. Anything else?"

Fury's face stays neutral as he looks to Short Steve again. A second cut across the jaw and it's starting to sting. Short Steve has good aim though. "Who else did Loki contact on earth?"

"A crap load." His tongue runs over his lips, avoiding any necessary movement of his jaw and trying not to pull at the now painfully tight hold Edgar and Bob have on him. "Didn't ask their names. Too busy watching my back when there was a god wandering around."

"You have a photographic memory, Stark." Fury says, irritation edging into his voice.

Tony smirks. "Yeah, see, the thing is that it only works when I want it to. Otherwise, I'd only remember the stuff I couldn't care less for. Faces in some underground something or other are not on the list of things I give a fuck about." Another glance to Short Steve and another hit to Tony's face, this time to the other side. "Ouch, boys, that's starting to smart. I'm getting cranky." He warns.

"What do you remember about the others working with Loki?" The genius levels a contumelious gaze at the director and says nothing. Short Steve slams a fist into Tony's abdomen this time and Tony's knees give out as he coughs. "What can you tell us about the others you saw with Loki?"

"Human. Maybe." Tony grates out. "They looked as human as Loki did. As human as you do. Like guys and a few girls. Villains don't have a tattoo on their foreheads with an arrow that says 'come get me, I tried to help an alien take over the world', alright?" Tony snaps.

Fury turns and walks back to lean against the wall. He gestures Short Steve to Tony once more and Tony pulls a face before the agent punches him again. There's no wait between hits for questions now; one sucker punch to the gut after another, after fists to his face, after unkind hands forcing him to stay standing and take the abuse.

It's almost twenty minutes before they stop and when Tony looks up with the bottom half of his face sticky and wet with dark crimson, Fury has a placating hand raised. "Did Loki say anything about escaping?"

"I wasn't his confidante. Wherever he went is his own business." Tony spits blood onto the floor beside more drops from earlier. "You want Loki? Go get him yourself. Leave me out of it. I saved the damn city; this is some shitty thanks I get for it."

"Allying yourself with the god that put the city in danger in the first place-"

"For god's sake, Fury, I only talked to the man. I didn't give him any secrets or tell him how to get out. You can thank your loyal Barton or that."

"Agent Barton was coerced through means beyond his control. You chose sides."

"I had a god show up and threaten me." Loki did threaten, but not then. Not that Tony cared about lying to SHIELD of all people. "And yeah, I did chose sides, but I chose my side. I chose not to let the entire world be overrun by aliens on hovercrafts, regardless of the other humans, supersoliders, or gods fighting. I risked my own damn life putting that missile through the portal. The same missile your superiors sent to destroy the city and its millions of inhabitants. So tell me who the real villain is here."

"Tell me if he talks." Fury directs to the agents before he leaves again. Short Steve resumes his position in front of Tony and the genius sighs.

"Can you not bruise my face so much this time? I have a charity thing on the seventeenth and I really don't want to show up looking like a hooligan."

Short Steve scoffs, the first sign of amusement Tony has seen from him yet and of course it's at Tony's expense. Tony prides himself that he doesn't cringe when Short Steve telegraphs his next hit.

**xXx**

Tony can deal with this.

After an hour or two of getting beaten up - enough to cause pain without knocking him out or causing internal damage - it's lonesome time again and they strap him back onto the table in a slightly more limp position. He aches, but he can deal with a few hits. If only it actually ended with a couple punches though.

Day five of SHIELD custody, a new agent come in. He threatens Tony with knives, land a few cuts in non-vital places that hurt and bleed, but are unlikely to even damage much long term. Faint scars still manage to start forming though, temporary though they may be. He's patched up at the end of every day and pricked full of antibiotics to stave off even the possibility of infections. Wouldn't do to have your prisoner die before you were finished with them.

At the seven day mark, the real pain begins. It starts with the knives and this time, they don't even bother to ask questions. Of all his interrogators, this one seems to enjoy his job the most. There's a sadistic glint in his eyes each time he makes an incision and more often than not, he lines up the blade and then watches Tony's eyes as the metal pierces ruined skin. Tony doesn't dare give him the satisfaction of looking away if at all possible and it spurs the agent on almost as much as it repulses him.

They're joined by a pair of agents that bring in a rolling cart out of Tony's line of vision. He recognizes the sound though; metal and rubber and cords followed by the buzz of high voltage currents. One of the agents from the new pair walks around to Tony's front and holds up two thin metal rods, each one no more than a couple millimeters thick, in each hand. She hands one off to the agent with the blades and takes the remaining rod close to the end.

It shouldn't be surprising, but he still cringes and tries to pull away as the rod slips between a cut made earlier on his forearm. He whinges when she lets go and it still hangs from his skin, shoved a good inch underneath, up towards his elbow.

"Isaacs," her voice is conversational enough to make Tony feel like throwing up, but that could be side effects of the IV meds as well. "I need a bigger incision on the other arm."

"Of course." The agent with the blade, Isaacs steps up and Tony tenses as the metal tip fishes under the small cut on his left arm. Their eyes meet again and Tony glares back. A grin pulls at the edge of sickly twisted lips and with a flick, Tony's skin tears under the knife's inelegant motion. A muffled shout is trapped in his throat, biting his lip to hold it in while Isaacs steps back. The one with the metal rods returns to Tony's line of vision and he feels the second rod worming its way into the jagged injury.

"Do you know where the war criminal Loki is hiding?" She asks after standing back and pulling off the bloodied latex gloves.

"I've told multiple other agents that I don't know where he's gone, for fuck's sake."

She stares at him for a moment before glancing beyond him to her partner out of sight. With a nod from her and the click of a switch behind Tony, his veins light up in searing pain, almost able to feel every arc of electricity crackle over and contract every muscle. He didn't even realize he was screaming until the current was turned off and Tony finds himself struggling to breathe through a hoarse throat as he falls limp-bodied against his restraints. His fingers are twitching against his will and his chest burns from the contact of electricity against the case of his arc reactor.

"Tingly." He croaks, pulling a grin and looking up to her. The look in his eyes must be manic as her mouth falls open slightly in shock and she makes a gesture to her partner again. There's the ratcheting sound of a dial that Tony dreads before the current returns and his spine arches in the sharpest curve possible with leather straps pressing him back down. His wrists burn as the straps there cut into the skin and he can only make out the feeling of wet warmth because he focuses on any sensation but the needle-like burn of electricity jerking at every physical reflex until he's nothing but a rag doll.

"Do you know where the war criminal Loki might be hiding?" She inquires slightly differently after the current is severed once more.

"My bedroom." He snaps. "Because I make deals with the devil, I may as well fuck him too."

She sighs and turns her back as the switch is flipped on again.

Repeated application does not dull the pain and unconsciousness is easily remedied for the rest of the day. Maybe it's a couple days. Senses jolted and racked, time keeping has kind of fallen by the wayside.

Another failed interrogation attempt, the electricity does not make a return on what Tony calls the ninth day. Tony would have cheered if the alternative wasn't a trio of gloved scientists coming to poke and prod at the arc reactor. Displeasure from Tony takes a backseat to fear as they pull the reactor from his chest while he has no choice but to watch in horror as the room goes dark and his heart pounds faster for long seconds before it stops. Nothing compared to hearing your own heart stop beating.

SHIELD is sharper than Tony gives them credit for and he wakes up to Nick Fury's glare and his reactor back where it should be. Thank God for Tony's paranoia creating a self-destructing core. During some risky experimentation, Tony had discovered a particularly explosive reaction could be set up on a timer if the reactor wasn't connected to him and only to him. Leave it out for too long and the resulting explosion would rival the Tesseract's big bang. He may have been clinically dead for at least a few minutes, he may still be locked up God knows where in SHIELD custody, but it felt damned good to make sure Fury wouldn't get a single thing out of him.

They sedated him and Tony isn't sure how much time has passed since the sedative was administered. Even upon waking though, things are... Strange. Everything looks like a montage of a 70's pot dream, but significantly less enjoyable. He still feels the pain of his injuries, but it's accompanied by a lack of a tangible connection to reality. His head lolls onto his shoulder in a barely controlled movement and he spots a different bag attached to the IV inside of his left elbow. Oh, great_._ Just what he fucking needed. They tried the hard approach and now they have to try pumping him full of drugs in hopes he'll spill secrets while thinking he was confiding in a hallucination? Just fantastic. Meds on an empty stomach was just cold-hearted.

Time is even stranger after the drugs make their debut. People come in, people go out, Tony is awake, Tony is asleep, Pepper makes a visit, the President of the United States makes a visit, Abraham Lincoln pops by once or twice for a chat, it's just dandy. He's not pain-free or careless; he's just confused about what the hell is real.

"Poor boy." Loki familiar tone resonates. "Your friends' backs turned, your empire unable to help, even your mind is wasted into a stupor. Prognosis is grim."

"You're a hallucination." Tony says, closing his eyes though he can still hear the god's laugh.

"Would you rather a delusion brought on by your drug-addled brain or the alternative? A real god come to reap vengeance for your betrayal?" And that was confirmation. Not Loki, just more fake images plastered on his eyeballs, suspended in empty air.

"If you escape here, Loki will come for you." Thor's baritone pulses with warmth and Tony opens his eyes to see the thunderer watching on with regretful eyes. Great. Changing faces now. Was Steve next? Movement makes the god's shape swim in and out of focus so fast that it has Tony groaning and turning his head into his shoulder. "He doesn't know where you are now. He could search the world over and not find you. You are safe in here."

"How comforting."

"Which death would you prefer?" Thor walks closer, no sound but his voice.

"Well, I'd prefer to die happy after marathon sex, but that's not happening any time soon, it seems." It was be killed by Loki or be killed by SHIELD. Somehow, he would rather have the psychopath over the nameless agents. That could have been an ego thing though. It took a god to take down Tony Stark. He would still be dead, but that'd be a hell of an epithet.

"Loyalty is commendable," Shit. Why did he have to think of Steve? "but you're not the only one at stake here. If Loki comes looking, he might just tear up the world to find you and God help any of the innocent lives that get in the way."

"You're in my own damn head; you know I don't know anything else." Tony sigh exasperatedly.

Steve frowns. "Or you're repressing details. Loki said something about coming back. About waiting for the heat to die down."

"Doesn't matter. I'm still a traitor in SHIELD's eyes. I could tell recite our conversations word for word and it wouldn't change a damn thing. Once they get what they want, I'm dead. Hell if I'm letting that happen. I just have to wait."

"For me? How sweet, Stark. We hardly spoke to one another, but you still silently pledged your loyalty without even realizing it." Loki had rejoined the group, and now it really was a group instead of just one delusion walking around. They acted like they heard each other, but not a one spared another a glance; they all just stared at Tony.

"I didn't pledge loyalty to anyone," Tony immediately regrets it when he lurches forward to strain against the bindings only to succeed in making his head lurch in pain and more disorientation. "Least of all to you."

"And if I had warned you of helicarrier's impending demise? Would you feel differently if I hadn't defenestrated you?" Tony can't bring himself to answer and he doesn't even know what he would say. What would have happened if things had played out differently? "You made your interest clear from the moment we met. I was not blind to your lust."

"None were." Thor adds. "I spied your gaze on my brother almost as much as his fell on you; that is why I warned you. Your attention to Loki is what attracts him. Mischief is far more rewarding when the intended target reacts with such vehemence."

"He likes me because I don't ignore him? Oh, please. Get out of my head if you're not going to make sense."

"I was raised with ignorance." The mischief god says. "Lied to, put in the shadows of my golden brother, and made an outsider in a world that I could not slip away from for long. You acknowledged my threat and became the only one to never underestimate me."

"This is a whole new way of theorizing that I did not want to experience." Tony groans, trying to block them out from behind his eye lids.

"You've nothing else to do awaiting your captors' next visit. Perhaps the drugs will dull the electroshock this time."

"I swear to your dad, be quiet for five minutes. I need to think."

"About what?" Tony can't tell if Steve's voice is less annoying or more annoying than his actual counterpart. "Natasha was right; this isn't some cave that you can escape."

"Doesn't mean I can't try." He pulls his wrists and feels the pinch of rough leather biting into raw skin but ignores it. The area is starting to numb by now anyway and the antibiotics they doped him with helps with the healing. None of it matters though because no matter how hard he tries, he can't think. His mind is obviously working, but it won't make sense without going in some roundabout way that Tony doesn't have time for. Alone as he is in the room, the trio feels real when he's caught in his head and just their presence is off-putting to an impairing degree. Pathetic. But it seemed poetic that his mind would be the torture method that actually did him in.

Yelling in frustration, he collapses back on the table with thick breathes making his chest heave. Such silence really was oppressive and it shredded Tony's sanity and nerves. "Loki..." He hoped his voice was low enough for no one to hear. "I've got some things to say to you if you get back. And they aren't going to be pretty little compliments."

* * *

**Endnote: **So does it count as having Loki in this chapter if he's a hallucination? *runs away before you can hurt me*

Spans over an eleven day time period. A lot of senseless boring interrogation, Bruce is allowed to see Tony and Tony confesses to his science bro that he had a short alliance with the god but had no knowledge of the hit on the carrier. After Bruce leaves, interrogation turns to torture. The pharmaceutical cocktail he's given makes Tony hallucinates about Loki constantly until he can barely tell if the person in front of him is another delusion or if his mind is laying the image of Loki over an actual SHIELD agent in the room.

Entire chapter in one sentence: Tony gets mind-fucked for eleven damn days in SHIELD's loving care.

HEY. TUMBLR. ww w. halcyonfrost . tumblr. com


	8. Chapter 8: Calm Like A Bomb

**AN: **Have I told you how sorry I am? I'm sorry. This chapter royally kicked my ass with three completely different drafts that changed the whole chapter every time I changed my mind. I got so much feedback on the last chapter and got into several discussions on who should be the one (or ones) to help Tony escape and on the fence about who I wanted as well, so it ended up being a chapter that took almost three weeks of on and off writing to finish. D8

Thank the AMAZING EllipsisObsessed from... well from everywhere, for stoking my JARVIS headcanon spark into a roaring flame.

Suggested music for reading this chapter: Session by Linkin Park ( /watch?v=WlxhYIyf5_w URL suffix on YouTube) and Immigrant Song covered by Trent Reznor, Karen O, and Atticus Rex ( /watch?v=ljbBayiWglg suffix on YouTube).

_**Chapter Summary: **Almost three weeks after SHIELD apprehends Tony, a little help finally arrives._

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Calm Like A Bomb**

Whether it was something in Tony's chemistry or something in whatever hell kind of drugs that were sticking him with, despite all the fuzzy faces and fun images dancing around the room, Tony was not calm. On the outside, sure, he looked one step short of passing out and drooling on the ground, but his mind was still intact and internally, he was pissed off.

By now, his enemies really should have learned their lessons. Historically, Tony's captors did not fare well. Time didn't matter; he escaped at some point and God help the bastards he ran through on the way. Maybe he was on the outs with the chaos god himself, but chaos itself was in Tony's very nature. SHIELD was now on his list of "idiots that tried to hold me back and will now suffer the consequences" and all the chaos he exuded was going to come out and bite SHIELD in its generously-sized ass. So they were part of the government; not such a big deal when Tony supplied the majority of the government's tech and provided the base work for even more.

But that would be then and this was the far less appealing now. Of the unintelligible blur of conscious and unconscious hours upon days, Tony vaguely remembers repeated attempts at questioning him while he was in a weakened state that felt more like more beatings, nurses came to replenish his IV, a few more "interrogations", but who knew how much of that actually happened? What little he was sure of was the pain because he could feel it; it rippled through him and burned with a constant ache deep in every muscle for long after they left. His mind was still brilliant, but his senses weren't functioning the way they should and very little was cohesive or solid anymore.

The one constant was this: however long it had been, whatever was actually happening or was just part of his imagination, by this point, no one was coming to get him out. There weren't a whole lot of options left open for Tony, but it wasn't hopeless. If no one was coming for him, he'd have to get himself out.

Neglect is neither expected nor a surprise treatment from SHIELD, but it's working to Tony's extreme advantage at the moment, so he isn't going to make note to anyone about his growing tolerance to the drugs. Between some combination of the dosage and the length of time he's been hooked up to the IV bags, the hallucinations are getting weaker and more infrequent. Infrequent didn't mean they were gone, just not as vivid. They were strongest in the first five hours after the lovely nurse with the clumsy hands came in and attached new bags; however, the interim between doses brought a return of mental faculties that meant exactly one thing on his mind for the nineteen long hours in between.

He wasn't to the interim yet today.

"Stark." The baritone that shouldn't be familiar rings in his ears. "I grow weary." Loki's pout was comical when Tony opened his eyes to find the god in remarkably casual wear. His mind went rampant with the possibilities during these first hours, and today had Loki in ashen gray trousers and a crisp white dress shirt that hugged an athletic build of taut muscle. Tony should have been more incensed with Loki, but these weeks of being trapped in his own mind had re-shifted priorities. Loki no longer equaled his enemy. A threat he would always be, but not the enemy. SHIELD was top of the list for that title.

Tony sighs, wiggling his nose against the phantom itch that had been bothering him off and on for the entire time he'd been tied up here. "Kind of busy, Prancer."

Loki hums, walking closer and eyes catching the light of the arc reactor as his hands reach out to frame it. It's another trick of his mind, pretty pictures with no weight behind them. The expression on his face is an overlay of memories of the real Loki, of the curiosity in his gaze at the sight of a strange device embedded in an even stranger mortal's chest. Seeing something he knew was real sewn onto something that could touch him and feel nothing only succeeded in wearing on his rather fragile sanity. Not that he could change anything about this. He was an engineer, not a neurologist or a psychologist; he didn't know what triggers would make certain things go away. While Thor, Steve, and even Pepper made visits during his bouts of dialoguing with the voices in his head, Loki was always there when he opened drug-dimmed eyes to the room and Loki was the last thing he saw before the hallucinations faded. As if Loki were the dream all the other characters stemmed from.

He does not need this "Psych: Sensation and Perception" stuff right now. His eyes feel far too heavy to put up with another long conversation with himself about all this crap.

"Then come find me," the god says as his fingers trail down Tony's torso without leaving so much as a tingling in his gut. Loki leans in closer, voice lowered to a whisper against his ear. "Look for your opportunity and get out."

"I'm fucking trying, you idiot."

xXx

When Tony woke up again, it was to the clang of his cell door opening and the patter of two pairs of feet shuffling inside.

Not an unusual thing, every other day - what Tony was assuming came out to ever other day - was punctuated by someone from medical checking in and change the bandages under where the leather cuffs would chafe healing skin. Another agent would watch from the door. The same two would never return twice either and none would ever speak to Tony directly, only about and around him. The agent by the door would carry a pistol at his or her waist; the nurse, first assumed to be unarmed before Tony was proven wrong, had a gun tucked subtly against their spine underneath their scrub top, so Tony didn't dare fight those odds. Instead, he played the whacked out card and stared off to a blank corner of the room and muttered the occasional nonsense of a one-sided conversation to keep the agents' guards down.

"He smells like dried blood." The one at the door comments with an audible sneer as he stands just inside the cell-like room. Two men today, the nurse young but deft in his wound dressing skills while the agent is stoic, middle-aged, and sounds humorless. Tony won't risk a peek that might ruin his cover just to see what the man looks like.

"What did you expect?" The nurse is leaning over Tony, wrapping the wrist closest first. "He's a captive informant. Tough one too apparently. Even Isaacs couldn't get what we needed out of him."

"I thought Isaacs cracked everyone."

"Said he was coming back tomorrow to try again. Director Fury sanctioned it."

Tony internalizes the shudder that wants to ripple through him. A couple more sessions with Freddy Krueger and Tony really would go legitimately insane, no meds needed.

The agent at the door is interrupted when his phone chimes and Tony can hear the rustle of material as the phone is retrieved.

"Huh. I need to get this. You good here?"

"Sure, go ahead." says the nurse. "Stark's one-step short of brain dead right now anyway; he won't be a problem."

He listens to the door open and shut and waits a moment longer as the nurse replaces the cuff on the finished wrist and leans across Tony's body to change the other bandage under the opposite cuff. It's quiet but for the soft whisper of the gauze encircling the joint of his hand.

Just as the nurse starts to tether him again, Tony pulls from the hold and grabs the other by the hair on the back of his head. There's an aborted shout of shock cut off as Tony slams the man's head into the table by his shoulder as hard as he can manage from his current position. Before the now unconscious body can finish slumping to the floor, Tony lets go to unbuckle himself with all the speed possible. Surging with adrenaline, he gets both hands undone and sits up to undo the straps at his ankles in less than ten seconds.

Allowing a few seconds to listen for company, he climbs down from the table and promptly buckles at the knees, legs weak with lack of use unassisted for too long. Catching himself with his palms, Tony suppresses the audible noise of pain that wants to erupt from him in earth-shattering shouts and instead crawls to retrieve the gun from the still nurse. His whole body throbs and the meds hang in his system heavier than he would have preferred during his escape attempt, but beggars couldn't be choosers. This was the only opportunity and damned if he was going to pass it by.

A quick check of the Glock 19 he filched reveals a partial magazine with thirteen bullets remaining and one waiting in the chamber, not a whole lot to work with when faced with an entire base of armed, well-trained officers. A silencer wouldn't have been amiss in this situation, but again, not much choice in the matter. Little hope didn't mean hopeless, Tony assures himself, and taking down a couple SHIELD agents on his way out was better than laying there and taking their abuse. If they wanted him out of the picture, they were going to have to kill him, and he would go down fighting with every ounce of strength he had.

Pressing his ear to the door, he waited for the footsteps outside to fade before he cracked the door open and stole a peek out. Clear for the moment. Steeling himself, he steps out and closes the cell behind himself, hearing the locks click shut on the way. The hallway extends too far to either side of him with no hints as to the right direction and doors spaced out too far. Asking someone would be an insanely stupid idea, so sneaking around it is. Couldn't avoid cameras though, unfortunately.

He opts for the left after a short internal debate that devolved to playing eenie, meanie, meinie, mo and darts down the corridor. Every door is given a quick listen for life, not wanting to run into anyone if he doesn't have to. Most doors have biometric locks as far as Tony can see which doesn't bode well for attempting to hide.

"What do you mean you didn't send it?" Footfalls grow closer and Tony tries the nearby door only to find it locked. "I still have the message. It was twenty seconds ago. You said it was urgent. I left a prisoner for that message." The voice continues as Tony fails to open the next closest door.

No other choice, he crouches down against the wall and lines up the sights of his gun to aim for the corner where the nearing agent would appear. The shot is much louder than he wanted and about six inches lower than intended, but the agent goes down all the same, muted instantly and dead within seconds from a bullet to the throat. Tony can hear a voice shouting from the dropped phone when he approaches, which means Tony has less than a minute before a battery of agents comes to investigate and Tony needs to be far, far away when they get here.

Crouching over the body, he steals the extra gun and tucks it into the back waistband of his jeans before continuing forward. Everything is locked along the way, he swears he can hear the faint sound of too many pairs of heavy boots coming closer, and it's not looking too good for Tony's survival chances. He can't turn around, unsure if that's even a valid way out, but who knows? Maybe his current direction isn't the right way. SHIELD doesn't exactly have helpful maps posted in every hallway.

He pauses by one door to get his bearings and the locks beeps beside his shoulder. Flinching, he steps away from the door, but the light stays green, "UNLOCKED" in large letters across the scanner screen. No listing of who authorized it. For lack of options despite well-founded suspicion, he pulls at the handle and the door swings inward to an unoccupied room. The far wall boasts at least five servers that stretch from floor to ceiling and a desk to the side littered with wires and several monitors all whirring away with various processes. Not the center of their systems but a remote console that should have access to the mainframe.

Tony shuts the door behind himself and shoves a rolling cart in front of it before going to brave the computers. He sets the gun down on the table and leans over the chair, minimizing the activity on one screen and rooting through menus until he finds what he's looking for. Eyes focused on activity, his fingers tap over the keys as he lays out a path over the maps conjured of SHIELD's precious base. Colored lines mark route after route, changing with every new requisite that Tony adds. No paths through large rooms, avoid all off duty areas, detour near an armory if possible in case he needs more ammo, on and on until the path was so convoluted that a bee would have trouble following it.

The screen dims and Tony panics for a split second in fear of tripping a secret block. His chest clenches in delight at the words that center themselves in the middle of the screen; a familiar identification code rolls across rows of coding for several seconds before it comes to a halt.

_"Apologies, sir."_ Text continues under the block of code. _"It took me quite some time longer than anticipated to gain access and catalog their routines thoroughly. Might I lend my assistance? We are most anxious to have you return home."_

He could almost hear Jarvis' beautiful accent just from reading the font. "Baby, I have missed you so much." Tony sighs in relief, typing out a reply as there was no microphone connected to the terminal. _"Light the way, darling."_

Several more lines of commands speed by in succession.

_SURVEILLANCE FEED ALTERATION CONFIRMED_

_ACTION: DETAINEE FILE #578927 DELETION: ANTHONY EDWARD STARK A.K.A IRON MAN_

_CONFIRM SYSTEM WIDE DELETION OF FILE?_

_ACTION CONFIRMED._

_QUERY: ANTHONY EDWARD STARK_

_NO FILE FOUND_

_QUERY: IRON MAN_

_NO FILE FOUND_

_ACTION: ADD NEW AUTHORIZATION: ANTHONY STARK. BIO-DATA REQUIRED_

_FINGERPRINT BIOMETRIC BYPASS_

_VOCAL CODE SCAN BYPASS_

_RETINAL SCAN REQUIRED FOR FILE COMPLETION_

_RETINAL SCAN CONFIRMED_

_CLEARANCE GRANTED: ANTHONY STARK, LEVEL EIGHT CLEARANCE AUTHORIZED_

_ACTION: FILE DELETION: ANTHONY STARK_

_ACTION CONFIRMED_

_FILE DELETION IN TWO HOURS_

_QUERY: LOCATION OF TERMINAL 07_

_"If you'll follow me, sir."_ Jarvis returns and the screen flickers back to the map, a single dashed line leading a ways down into another room that looked to be probably a five minute journey away. A dialog box hovers over the destination, marking it as another terminal that would already have the next section of an escape plan waiting for Tony when he got there. If ever Tony doubted the usefulness of an AI sentient enough to hack the ever-living crap out of a high-security government facility... well, he actually he never doubted Jarvis and sure as hell wasn't going to start now.

A few more seconds' study is given to the map before Tony closes it and expands the previous windows to fill the screen again. Gun back in hand, he makes his way back into the hall and goes right to follow the path Jarvis had laid out. He sticks to the wall and keeps his focus on the sounds of anyone that could he could come across on the way. If a group runs into him out of nowhere, a pair of guns aren't going to do much to save Tony's ass though. Much to his luck, each time voices start to come closer, they'll stop and go the opposite direction and Tony's pretty sure he had Jarvis to thank for that. If his AI can hack the surveillance and personnel files of a high-level agency, he can send messages to agents' phones and redirect them. His baby was going to get the most amazing upgrade when Tony got back.

It was already unlocked when Tony reached it and Tony mouthed a thank you to the cameras as he ducked inside and closed the door. Terminal 07 was a smaller room with only one screen, the windows shrinking out of sight to be replaced by a new map as Tony approached.

_ERROR: TERMINAL 11 ACCESS DENIED_

_TERMINAL 11 OCCUPIED_

_UNABLE TO CONTACT_

_PROCEED WITH CAUTION_

Great. So just another way of telling Tony some poor idiot wasn't leaving and Tony would have to kill him. Well, add him to the list. Back outside, he follows the directions to the next terminal with increasing unease while trusting Jarvis to keep the path clear. His fancy new clearance opens the door for him this time and rather than try to creep in, he swings the door open wide. The man inside swivels his chair to face the door, hand on a sidearm still resting on the table, but Tony's gun is already raised and he fires off two shots, one striking the agent in the shoulder, the other bullet straying to the center of his chest. He slumps back, wide eyes trained on Tony before his head falls back with his last breathe. Tony closes himself in and walks over to the terminal, pushing the entire chair complete with fresh corpse still seated in it out of the way in order to access the computer. Jarvis makes his way in with Tony's help and the next route is set, further away than before but a straighter path.

With a short break to breathe, he leaves this room and locks the door as if it will change a thing. If another agent comes along and has clearance, nothing will hold them back from finding the body in there. As long as Tony is gone by that point, he couldn't care less who stumbles across the kid that would have shot Tony if Tony hadn't killed him first.

Halfway down the hall and regaining his confidence in actually making it out, the lights blink out, followed by the dwindling hum as everything else follows. Red emergency lighting lines the floor a few seconds later, but that doesn't make a difference to Tony's horror.

"Jarvis?" No response. Shit. "Jarvis?!" He whispers as loud as he can before pressing his back to the wall and racing to concoct another plan before he's discovered. With no Jarvis putting oncoming agents on detour, the possibility of being recaptured skyrockets. Top that with the power cutting meaning that the doors of all the rooms he needs to get into are now stuck in locked mode without a way to get past. Can't hack an electronic protocol with no power. Tony is amazing and genius, but this is a government facility designed to keep people in and has more than a few redundancies to prevent its captives from escaping.

That goes down even further on his priority list as an explosion rolls through that shakes the whole base so hard that it sends Tony stumbling into a wall just to stay upright. Shouts follows in the panicked aftermath, but it's definitely leading away from Tony. Words are indistinguishable from this distance and Tony isn't curious enough to risk getting caught to find up what blew up in SHIELD's face this time.

Hugging the wall, he moves to the right and follows the hallway's twists and turns for a few hundred yards, but can't seem to escape the discord he was trying to leave behind. The clamor of voices has escalated to more loud crashes and heavy equipment moving in a way it was probably not supposed to judging from the mechanical groans that accompany them. If Tony didn't know better, he would say the Hulk had burst in to wreak havoc. Whatever it is, it still isn't where Tony wants to be right now.

The corridor is empty before him and he's thankful for that much, but still keeps towards doorways just in case the power happens to come back on. Hope is hope whether it's unfounded or not and Tony hadn't bothered to memorize all of SHIELD's protocols for what to do when the power went out. Of all the things to prepare for, that just hadn't come up on his list. He's already making this shit up as he goes.

Attempts to avoid the apparent fight prove to be fruitless when something large crashes through the wall fifteen feet in front of him. Heart clenching in painful beats, he stays still, unable to pull his eyes from the immobile human arm visible beneath the mangled steel box blocking the corridor before him. There's still fighting coming from the newly opened room and when another body in SHIELD gear is tossed through the hole in the wall, Tony can hardly decide whether he should try to find out who's owning SHIELD's ass or get the hell away from whomever is actually owning SHIELD's ass in their own base.

A crunch of rubble announces his time is up for decisions, but Tony can't suppress the relief he feels at the figure climbing through the whole. Loki looks slightly more ruffled and doesn't even notice Tony at first, glancing over the corpses from a distance to confirm their demise. His hair seems slightly longer now and not the slicked back oil of his previous look but wild and harried. He's barely even out of breath and the only dents to his armor are nothing more than grazes from bullets that never succeeded in penetration. Loki's six feet plus of a wrathful god; more than enough to remind Tony just what he was lucky enough to escape before Thor dragged Loki back to Asgard.

Tony's foot shuffles back of its own accord and the faint sounds draws Loki's attention sharply as he grips the blade in his hand tighter in preparation. As soon as he registers it's Tony though, absinthe green eyes light up with more emotion than he regarded the fallen agents with. Tony isn't sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing since he can't quite decipher that look. The god looked at the bodies with a near disgust, like they were inferior and unworthy of even his blade, but with Tony, there's _pleasure_ in that gaze.

"Lover," Loki says, tilting his head and stepping closer. A knife nearly as long as his whole arm drips gore as Loki holds it in one hand, and Tony pays extra close attention to the weapon, watching for any signs that might lead to Loki using it against Tony. "I've been looking for you." And there Tony figured it out: pure delight and satisfaction blazed in Loki's eyes.

"Have you now?" Tony pulls a smile and opens his arms invitingly. "Well, I've been here, hoping that knife isn't for me." He nods towards it and Loki glances down, considers the weapon for a moment before looking back to Tony with a wide grin.

"I don't want you dead, Stark. What must I do to assure you of that?"

"'Fraid I'm low on trust at the moment. Might want to ask me later."

"We haven't the time for 'later'; I've attracted a following on my way through." He sighs as if terribly, theatrically bored with the fact that he's being pursued for attacking a government base.

"Can you teleport us out of here?"

Frowning, Loki shakes his head. "I need to conserve my energy." His eyes harden slightly as they finally settle over the injuries evident across Tony's body. "Can you make it further?"

"Honey, I made it this far. I'd be delighted to reap a little payback on them." Tony wiggles the gun in his hand with a dark chuckle and Loki's smile curls into approval. Of course he would like more mischief and violence. "You know the way out, right?"

"Of course."

"Good. Then hop to it and get me the hell out of here. I don't have that many bullets left."

Loki turns and steps back into the room he came from and Tony follows with both hands on his gun, left hand supporting the bottom of the grip to steady arms that were still trembling slightly from the fading drugs in his system. Thank God for the adrenaline fueling him at the moment or he wouldn't have gotten as far as he has so far.

Where Loki has been is obvious; the floor is littered with corpses and those still gasping for breath from bloody lips are slumped against the wall. Loki walks with purpose and doesn't waste attention on the fallen, leading the way out with long-legged strides that Tony has to sprint to keep up with. A complaint was on his lips, a smart-assed remark telling Loki to slow the fuck down, but another gaze at the bodies strewn everywhere makes Tony shut up. Best not to piss off the god, actually. There was plenty time for that after they got out of here.

The extreme focus leaves Loki wide open to attack from the sides, which Tony covers, shooting to disarm or down anyone that tried even if he couldn't kill in one shot. It's chaotic and Tony's ammunition is limited enough that he can't do more than that and still keep up with Loki. The few idiotic enough to try attacking from the front are dealt with by Loki's quick blade in a slice across the throat for those that didn't drop their gun faster and anyone that tried a fist fight with Loki received blood-warmed metal sinking between their ribs to open a lung or stop a heart in its rhythm.

Tony had used both guns until the slide locked back with an empty magazine and he resorted to nicking half empty guns from fallen soldiers. Another empty clip and he tosses it back, stopping only for the two or three seconds he could to grab another gun and catch up to Loki again. Adrenaline starting to fade, Tony is wearing down and he keeps almost missing hidden shooters. Of course Loki isn't perturbed by them, but Tony is significantly less armored. All he's wearing is the same clothes he came in with - dark jeans and a black singlet - and none of it is bullet or knife proof in the slightest.

"Stark! Get up here! We're close!" Loki shouts, slicing through another agent while Tony is crouching behind a crate to avoid another person trying to kill him. Of course it distracts him enough to miss the armed agent creeping from the opposite side with a perfect view of Tony. He notices too late and rolls to the side in avoidance of the two shots that hit the crate right where his head was two seconds before, squeezes off three shots in quick succession to deal with the shooter, but the pain in his shoulder says he didn't dodge far enough.

Red blossoms above the left side of his chest, he feels shattered fragments shifting under his skin where his scapula used to be, and the pain is intense enough to make Tony feel like vomiting stomach acid over the floor next to him.

"Anthony!" Loki's at his side and touches the entrance wound to send screaming pain across his chest. Being literal is a bitch to his dignity sometimes.

"Second shooter," he manages, nodding behind the crate. "There's still-"

"Not anymore." Loki interrupts. "I relieved him before I came here." Hands soaked in the blood of at least a couple dozen agents now hover above Tony's wound but don't touch again. "How bad is the pain?"

"On a scale of one to fucking hurts, this rates as 'I might just puke on you' if that answers your question."

"Can you stand? We must leave. I can help but not here."

"Yeah, get me up."

Loki moves to opposite side and wraps an arm around Tony's waist, Tony's good arm draped over Loki's hard shoulders. Godly strength was evident to Tony's extreme satisfaction and they hobbled in their uncoordinated walk back the way Loki had started.

"Is this the exit?" Seemed too dark to be the exit and in fact, looked more than another room.

"Close enough. Hold on tightly."

The grip tightened and then the world spun into a spiraling vortex with a footpath down the center that Loki walked upon with Tony in tow. Whatever this was, it was much nicer than the previous teleportation trips.

"Honey, I think you've been lying to me." Tony slurs, finding himself putting more weight on Loki.

Loki scoffs. "You are not exempt from my mischief, Mr. Stark."

"Yeah, I figured that."

Finally, the lights stopped to end in the sound of shattering glass.

"Tony!"

Tony opens his eyes to Bruce on the other side of the lab table with Steve standing beside him, both looking shocked but at Tony and Loki's mere presence or at Tony's current state of health, the inventor doesn't have time to decipher.

"Heya, darlings. I'm back." He lists heavily into Loki with a groan. "Awake is another story though," he says before blood loss and exhaustion pull him into unconsciousness.

* * *

**Endnote: **Chapter title from the Rage Against the Machine song of the same title.


End file.
